Even during our long-lit summer days, the sun of awareness comes up slowly … sometimes. This has been especially true of our — the public’s — general awareness of our effects on the streams and coastal waters that enrich and define our lands and lives. And yet we are thick on the ground, everywhere, and that offers us a chance to be good for those waters. With a little thought and some water empathy, we can help our waters and all the beings that live near and in them be healthier.

A pesticide warning sign. Sandy Stott photo

Consider the small sign often seen warning us about the property we are near. “CAUTION,” it says, “Pesticide Application.” And in its upper right corner there is this graphic: “To the adult (dog-walker), child (still growing), dog (always sniffing) — Stay away; don’t cross this patch of ground. You risk your health.”

“Whoa, (or grrr),” we the passersby might say, “that’s a strong warning.” And it is. It raises this common sense question: What are we doing buying and laying this toxic stuff out on our land? “What,” to quote us when we are exasperated, “are we thinking?”

Here, I confess confusion. I don’t understand how the pursuit of a uniform lawn, or “weed-free” stretch of ground, brought us to using toxins on the land where we live. Beauty born of poison? Is that beauty at all?

Further confusion visits me when I think about the primary rule of the watershed where each of us lives: everything, every thing that soaks in here goes — finally — there; “there” being our streams and the sea (from which, by the way, comes much of the bounty of our food).

Brunswick has eight watersheds, and each of us from this town lives in one of them. Some of us are lucky enough to “own” a little stamp of land in one of those ‘sheds.

But not many (not enough) of us who walk into and work in our yards ask, “Let’s see, what am I sending to the sea today?” Then, we garden or fertilize or consider what toxin we’ll use to encourage a particular composition of our lawns or discourage plants deemed unlovely.

“Here,” we might say, if we think about it, “you go. Today, as I try to make my grass say a uniform ‘green,’ I’m sending you some extra nitrogen.” Or, “As I try to take the crab out of that grass, I’m passing on some toxins. I sure hope they don’t give you algal blooms or poison your shellfish.”

That’s if we think about the streams and sea at all while doing yard work.

My mother grew up in Maine, and when I was a kid, we visited her parents for a week or two each summer in Friendship. There, I spent much of the day either thrashing around in the water or climbing along the ledgy coastline, looking also out to sea in case the legendary pirate, Dirty Jack, might be creeping in with the fog. Jack was my grandfather’s invention, but I believed in him and the edge of worry that seemed native to the huge sea in front of me.

What didn’t concern me was my routine, low-tide chore. When the water backed off, exposing the seaweed rocks of the point, I lugged the metal trash bucket out to the end and dumped whatever food leftovers were inside onto the rocks. The tide then came in and took them away. Everyone else seemed to do the same.

I also learned not to play near the rusting pipes running down to the water from the houses that dotted the shore. Each disgorged doses of not-so-nice whenever seaside plumbing got used.

We’ve largely zoned that sort of sea-abuse from our shores and mudflats now, but we have been slow to make the logical leap to doing the same with pollutants that come from our little stamps of personal land. Somehow, in our minds, our little holdings don’t connect with the large common sea. And yet, of course, they do: Whatever goes onto our yards works, as everything does, its way into our waters. And our waters know where they are going … always.

There are markers of our effects everywhere — in the waters of Casco Bay, in the shellfish that live there, in some of the vanishing buffers (eelgrass, e.g.) that make our shorelines resilient. We have, most agree, a lot to lose.

Might we then migrate away from chemical fingerprints and back into closer relations with our lands and waters? Might we make the little warning signs that “flower” on the edge of our properties obsolete?

Want some good advice on gardening and land work that encourages rather than compromises land and animal health? Here’s a link to the excellent Cumberland County Soil and Water District’s Yardscaping advice (lots of valuable links within as well): cumberlandswcd.org/yardscape.

And here is the link to the town’s excellent watersheds map; see if you can locate your spot in your watershed: brunswickme.gov/DocumentCenter/View/8741/Brunswick-Watersheds-Map.

Finally, the Brunswick Conservation Commission, of which I am a member, is working on a proposal to update our ordinances on uses of fertilizers and pesticides on our lands. Please, if you are inclined, let me know how you feel about our uses of these substances.

Sandy Stott is a Brunswick resident, chairperson of the town’s Conservation Commission and a member of Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust’s Board of Directors. He writes for a variety of publications. He may be reached at fsandystott@gmail.com.