By Debbe Nicholson

The Dark Skies Article passed at Town Meeting and MCA supports its objectives. Here are some thoughts on how we can help keep our skies dark. 

• Walk around the outside of your house in the evening when your outside lights are on.
• Take notice of your outside lighting
• Walk way lighting is important and should provide safe passage to your door but not light up your whole yard.
• Do you have landscape lighting? Is it up lighting? (tree or shrub lighting) is it necessary?
• Are your house or garage lights shining towards the ground? are they or can they be redirected to light the ground below them instead of further out.
• Do you leave them on all night or are they on a timer or motion sensor?
• If you are away over the winter  are your lights turned off?
• Now that it is spring (landscape season) Please be mindful that Town water or well, all our water comes from a sole source and the underground flow from Monomoy all ends up in the harbor.
• If you have a sprinkler system does it have a moisture sensor that turns it off if it is raining?
• Have you asked your landscaper about what fertilizer and how much they are using?
• Please be careful about spraying pesticides, it doesn’t discriminate between pests and helpful insects.
• Please ask your landscaper to allow all milkweed to grow.  It is the only food for the monarch caterpillar. The Monarch butterfly lays their eggs on  the leaf so that when the caterpillar hatches their food is handy. We need our pollinators ( butterflies, bees etc.) in order to have fruit and vegetables.