ELLIE'S BLOG on Living Well with Disability

Blog Action Day 2010: Water from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

It's a rainy day here in Saratoga Springs in upstate New York.  I'm so grateful for the rain because it's good for our garden the trees, bushes and lawn as well. Also it is very important at this time of the year to water deeply before the temperature drops below freezing.

We brought in our vegetables that were ripe and those that could continue to ripen inside that would be negatively affected by frost.  We have baskets overflowing in the kitchen of peppers, tomatoes and  eggplants.

This summer was very hot for us and we had much less water than normal . But our city water supply saw us through as it did have enough in reserves even though it was getting low.  So we were able to water our vegetable  garden as well as our flowers, bush's and trees as they needed it. And because of that we had a very abundant crop of vegetables that we have been drying and freezing to last us through the winter.  And our flowers, bush's and newly planted trees were thriving this summer which gave us great pleasure and they and the perennials will return next year thanks to the sun and a good water supply..

  I always say we live in a little garden of Eden. We have no severe droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes or flooding. The water we have coming into our homes is  clean and safe even if a little hard.  And  we also have local springs that you can get spring water for free. Just bring your gallon bottles full them up and bring them home.

As we are not affected by weather causing too much or too little water or unsafe polluted water it would be very easy to ignore what's happening in the rest of the country or the world with water on this planet.  But as we are in many ways all in this together one can't justify doing that.

Indeed when I look around the rest of the country. And also the rest of the world where there are severe droughts and terrible floods bringing about the problems of hunger, disease, pollution, home's and villages destroyed I have to pause and reflect on how lucky I am to live in what I call the garden of Eden.

Now of course we are also responsible. We have an organic garden we use no chemical fertilizers. We also mulch and use buckets to catch the rain water and reuse that water in the garden.  Inside we're very careful about our water use also.  Partly because we're basically thrifty people but also because we feel is the right thing to do.

And we have enough water and a good climate where we can grow our own food. We are surrounded by supermarkets and a great farmers market if we need something we don't grow. Yet without water and a stable climate many around the word cannot grow their food as well as have safe drinking water. And there is no bottled water,free spring water, or supermarkets to buy safe food.

On July 28 2010 The UN General Assembly declared that clean drinking water and sanitation is a human right.  And they voiced deep concern that almost 900,000,000,000 people worldwide do not have access to clean water.to read more go to: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=35456&Cr=sanitation&Cr1

And to read much more about Blog Action Day and other bloggers thoughts and ideas on solving the problem go to:

http://blogactionday.change.org/

                                                                                                            ellie