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• Down Yonder: That’s illegal in Florida

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Wouldn’t ya just know it! Plenty of rain starts pourin’ down from the heavens just about the time South Florida’s water regulators slap year-round rules on how much water we can throw on our lawns.

You’d think the South Florida Water Management District, with as much power as it has, could coordinate better with God over the weather!

A lot of folks hate bein’ told they can’t water their pretty lawns as much as they’d like and they get testy every time the water district tells ‘em to cut back.

Then it starts rainin’ and those same folks can’t understand why the water bureaucrats think there is a water shortage and they just get angrier.

Too many of ‘em also forget to turn off their awe-to-matic sprinklers. Ain’t nothin’ funnier — or is it more tragic? — than to see some fancy underground remote-control pop-up-out-of-the-ground sprinkler system spewin’ the wet stuff in a finely controlled mist as the rain is poundin’ down on the same Floratam yard.

It would seem natural that folks who fret over the beauty of their lawn would have perpetual conflict with the water bureaucrats who want ‘em to quit frettin’. But it ain’t natural and the conflict doesn’t even have to exist in the first place.

To begin with, the reason water bureaucrats slap rules and regulations on lawn-waterin’ is because we pour way too much drinkin’ water on the grass.

Nearly every utilities chief in the region will tell you that during the winter — when it doesn’t rain much — the single biggest use of water is put to irrigatin’ the grass. Plus, we ain’t got nearly enough rain in the last few summers and we’re actually — believe it or not — in the middle of a relative drought.

But folks forget that havin’ neatly trimmed, bright green lawns is about as unnatural as Florida can get. If God had wanted Florida to look like a football field he would’ve filled in the Everglades and put lime markin’s all over it.

No ma’am, pretty green lawns just ain’t a natural part of Florida.

Once you’ve put in — at great expense — your pretty lawn, you’ve got to spend buckets of money buyin’ fertilizers and pesticides and Lord-knows-what-all to keep it green and pretty. And then, of course, you’ve got to mow the dang thing all the time.

So, what do we do about this dilemma of modern Florida life?

Well, sir, for one thing we don’t need to irrigate our yards as much as we do. The yard will be just fine with 15 or 20 minutes of sprinklin’ once or twice a week. Heck, we don’t need to irrigate during the summer at all, usually.

Second, we can be a lot smarter about the way we make our yards look pretty and, for that matter, what we mean by “pretty.”

“Xeriscape,” is a word some organization trademarked a few years back to describe plants and ground cover that grow naturally in Florida and are actually part of Florida.

Natural Florida plants long ago adjusted to the seasonal wet and dry months and prosper quite nicely under the half-a-year dry and half-a-year wet Florida climate.

What that means to homeowners is that if we plant natural Florida foliage we don’t have to irrigate as much because the plants don’t expect all that extra water, don’t need it.

Now, I agree some folks can get carried away with their yards — like the folks who covered their entire lot with rocks and concrete. That’s called, “zero-scaping,” not Xeriscaping.

But there are plenty of pretty plants that can decorate a yard and give it that natural Florida look without usin’ up somebody else’s drinkin’ water.

It just requires a little common sense and you can find plenty of literature about Xeriscaping at just about any government office or commercial nursery.

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Steve Hart is a sailor, angler, explorer, raconteur, amateur citrus-grower and semi-professional theologian who masqueraded as a Florida journalist and pundit for the last 25 years. A fifth-generation Floridian, Hart comes from solid cracker stock but revels in the changing face of 21st century Florida and its patchwork quilt of people, their cultures, traditions, shades and ideas. His book, “Tales from Down Yonder, Florida,” is available in local bookstores and on the Web at www.downyonderflorida.com.