Earth Day

My long, paved driveway has a lot of moss on it this year. I decided to get rid of the moss in a way that’s as environmentally safe as possible.

Anne used the leaf blower to clean the driveway, a huge job since pine needles and leaves were stuck because they’d been rained on. She was sore the next day, and I’m grateful for her help. Yes, a broom is better for the environment than a leaf blower, but it would have been an impossible task. Sweeping my driveway is like painting the Golden Gate bridge; by the time you finish, you need to start over.

Once Eric did a science experiment on my driveway’s moss, where we diluted bleach in varying amounts, vinegar in varying amounts, and tried a chemical moss killer. The vinegar did the job, so yesterday I bought eight large jugs of vinegar. This morning I used a watering can with a “shower” head to apply the vinegar to the moss. I ran out of vinegar before I was half done, but I’ll wait to buy more until I need to drive to town for another reason. After I’d loaded my shopping cart yesterday, a woman said to me, “You must be going to make A LOT of pickles!”

While I was sprinkling vinegar on the moss, Lucy ran around biting pine cones and looking for squirrels. Once she ran across an area where I had just applied the vinegar. If I’d been using a chemical spray, I would have had to wash her paws. No, if I’d been using a chemical spray I wouldn’t have let Lucy be out with me. With vinegar, I don’t worry about Lucy or the small forest critters.

Right now my driveway smells a bit like pickles, but the formerly green moss is turning brown, and I’m glad I tried a natural solution to my problem. Happy Earth Day!

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