Who'll stop the rain...toxins?

I can’t seem to get started today. So many ideas, all of them crowding at the gate, wanting to be the first to be chosen, yelling “pick me, pick me!”

Stop, stop, stop! Most of you are too long! How about a nice picture? I've made it extra-large so you can read the sign.



Picture Credit: Me. Taken in the Walmart parking lot a few years ago, in the town I lived in at the time.

I find this picture sort of hilarious. This…is a rain garden. A rain garden. Ah yes, observe the lush, verdant plant life. Can’t you just see the radiant green of the flora! Where, you ask? Right there! See, that one little struggling weed to right and behind the sign. Oh, there’s one further in the background too.

This garden is designed to reduce toxins by filtration, so FOR THE LOVE OF PETE DON’T PILE ANY SNOW ON IT!

I know the reality is that the snow in the parking lot would contain a good deal of ice melt and salt, which would not be filtered by the plants, it would kill them. Maybe that’s even what happened, snow did get piled and the filtering plants died off when they tried to grow that spring.

But at first glance the sign and the words seem like…proof of the ridiculousness of modern life. Yep. That even with things such as rain gardens, we are still regularly applying things to the ground that are too toxic for the rain garden to filter. Or maybe I’m just jaded. What do you think?