photo by Beth Harper via Creative Commons.

Outdoors is where we as residents tend to use huge amounts of water. In some parts of the country, mostly out in the arid West, 70 percent or more of residential water is used for lawn irrigation.

Something is seriously wrong with this picture. Pink flamingos and fountains aside, decorative lawns that need lots of care and lots of water are scourges. It may be that suburbia is making the wells run dry. Indeed, homeowners use an average of 120 gallons of water each day for things outside.

Think about that for a second: "things outside" -- where rain should be able to do the job nicely -- if we stick with the vegetation that grows naturally in our locale, that is. Irrigation, my dear water-freak neighbor, was invented to keep our fields of food alive, not your imported turf.