Save Water Eat Vegan

For us non-southern Californians, growing season is still approaching. So thoughts of planting a garden, grooming the lawn, maybe trying out starting a vinyard again- wait those aren't grapes, "them is" mistletoe! How can one not mentally draw a parallel to the paradox that all those seemingly good pastimes are now consumer sports? Garden = rent tiller, buy some type of N-P-K source (organic or schmorganic up to you) check the tool shed for garden tools - hey I thought I replaced the handle on this rake last season! Oh yeah - we didn't plant a garden last season because they wouldn't let me dig up the quadrangle at the apartment that is now a rectangle, because due to the demand for car space, half is now converted from grass to gravel in order to reduce the number of on-street parking tickets. As far as that goes, we did plant a balcony garden- that was fun until Squirrel found our broccoli stash thinking it was the local salad bar and safe deposit box or dirt, for his nuts. Aw nuts. Then, being no room to bring all those pots in for the winter, snow and ice destroyed many of them- yes, clay pots. See the pattern? Ever since I traded my kiln in for a new wireless mouse, I've been forced to purchase pottery, and ever since the relatives plowed under grandfather's blacksmith shop to build a new dissertation factory, I've had to buy metal tools, and ever since I quit my day-job I've had to beg and borrow and barter for the equipment needed to water the chewed tomato plants. Which brings us back to the water issue. On top of all that, it's going to take water, one of our most valuable resources, to get any of this stuff to work- even though soot-laden acid rain falls once in a while, there are enough drought-days to fry the toughest string bean. And if I decided to manicure the 3 square yards of lawn? What about the watering ban on lawns? What about the mistletoe - er - grapes, you know, for OWV syrah, vintage 2011? Hey if we named ourselves Once A Year Vegan, we could just say OYVE. Digression is the suggestion; what the heck is my point? So with this premise, it seems that growing anything takes a lot of water. Why would we do it? How can it be good for the environment? Now, Albert, let's talk relativity. To make one apple, let's say, or grow one apple because only the Maker can make an apple at least until three-dimensional printers perfect edible media, one needs water in the tens of gallons. Something like 52, according to National Geographic. Wow- fifty two gallons. That's a lot and we're talking everything from watering, to washing, to washing the truck that takes them to market. And watering the sweaty guys that have to do the work! Or sweaty children in China if we don't BUY LOCAL- then we have to include the 187E18 gallons (source: Wiki) in the Pacific required to float the barge over.... Ready, now let's buy a pound of beef - that takes water in the thousands of gallons- two powers more; something in the 4,000 range according to NatGeo. Of course, this could change in the future with sustainable farming and practices, like buying local grass fed if you're going to do it, or one might consider trading that lebigmack for something vegan. And guess what; enough people start doing that, and we can water our gardens without the fines. Wow- did I just say that?