Water

We've already had a couple of unseasonal heat waves.  The creek is the lowest I have ever seen it in the five years I have been able to see it, since removing the blackberry thatch.  I had to use the pick axe to make a hole to plant my glory vine…the clay soil was so thoroughly dry...how the heck will I keep that watered in August?

Enough signs are piling up for all of us to realize that concerns about water are escalating and finally reaching the consciousness of the general population, not only the environmentalists and the tree huggers (like me).  The inconvenience of having to pay exorbidant rates for water painfully reminds us of several things.  Big business (the guys who own the taps) will be there to take your money for what used to be called a "natural" resource.  (It is no longer "natural" when it has to be extracted from very far away and piped in to the wastelands of our concrete polluted cities.)

When contemplating this awful fix we're in, I am often reminded of the cautionary tale told so well in the animated movie, "Rango"…easy to digest, compared to a "dry" (pun intended) documentary loaded with statistics.  The movie relates with great good humor and fabulous characters, right from the opening sequence when Rango, a spacey little gecko living in a make-believe world of lizard heaven, is rudely jarred into reality, along with his buddy a goldfish, onto the tarmac in a ceaselessly cruel desert…with no water.  I feel like Rango, right now, watching my garden dry up just as the warmth is encouraging everything to grow and reproduce.  What to do?

Well, I'm a big believer in "knowledge is power",  so once I acknowledged the issue, learning how to adjust to this reality is the next order of business.  Yeah, its like a twelve step program for hortiholics.

Acknowledge you have a problem. ( I actually have several problems:)

For two years in a row (I'm a slow learner), I called the water company to complain about my extremely high summer bills.  I am being penalized for growing my own food, I said.  I should be getting a rebate!   I should at least be able to set up "level billing", to average out the bill annually instead of a few giant bills in the summer.  They said "no dice" on either suggestion, but they would send a water conservation consultant to my property to assess the situation.  I readily agreed, being certain that I was doing everything an intelligent person could do to use water carefully.  I have a rain barrel, don't I?
Problem No. 1: EXTREMELY HIGH WATER BILLS IN SUMMER

The water conservation consultant was a nice man named Jim who grew vegetables also.  He loved my garden, and had great patience while I carried on about my brassicas and the challenges of growing carrots.  By the time we were shaking hands good-bye-nice-to-meet-you, I had learned several useful things that I had blindly, innocently, done to shoot myself in the foot.

I only have two outside water faucets attached to the house, which must serve the entire 1/2 acre property until I can afford to have more water faucets installed, closer to the gardens, which may be more than 100 feet from the water source.  Hence, I have had quite a combination of splitters, hoses, watering wands, sprinklers, soaker hoses, water barrels, and rills in an attempt to get water where I need it.  This effort has been a miserable failure for several reasons, and, if I forgot to turn off the spigot, the whole damn thing might leak!
Problem No. 2: POOR WATER DELIVERY SYSTEM

At the height of the summer drought (in years past that has been between July 4 and September 15, nowadays this seems to be extending in both directions by about 30 days!), I have been watering my vegetable "hot pots" at least daily, sometimes twice a day.  The position of these pots, on a southwest- facing concrete pad, is excellent for rapid and extended growth of heat-loving tomatoes and peppers, but they suck up water like a sponge.  I have many plants in containers besides vegetables, maybe a couple of hundred or so (I know, I am also a "pot-a-holic"),  artfully arranged all around the perimeter of the house, deck, gravel terrace, zen courtyard, woodland and scree garden.  You get the picture…everywhere.  Many of these need watering almost every day during the dry months, too, especially if they are in full sun.  
Problem No. 3:  CONTAINERS  NEED SUPPLIMENTAL WATER.

Additionally, when I first got started gardening here, I fell in love with every woodlander I saw.  I was determined to recreate what I had experienced as a child in the woods of Washington state:   the mystic euphoria of fairy bells in the woods, dogwood blossoms floating in the understory of giant fir trees, and the magic of mushrooms and wild ferns in the forest duff.  I bought and planted hundreds of luscious (by definition, lush, and needs moist soil) plants to supplement the native flora:  Hydrangea, hosta, more ferns especially.  I did not realize that my lovely woodland, so moist in early spring, would become a dusty dry parched wasteland in August.  No wonder the "spring ephemerals" disappear in summer…they sleep away the drought!
Problem No. 4:  WATER-THIRSTY PLANTS NEED SUPPLIMENTAL WATER…YOU HAVE TOO MANY IN THE WRONG PLACE.

I am now working on all four (this is a very unlucky number for the Japanese…) problems and I am hopeful that I can master them!  Stay tuned to hear about my SOLUTIONS!