Rainy Ruminations

I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of rain collecting—though I’m not sure what to call it. Roof rainwater runoff catchment is a bit of a mouthful; rain harvesting reminds me too much of the moisture farmers back on Tatooine. (People reading this blog get Star Wars refs, right?) Whatever it’s called, I’ve opted to set the idea aside, at least for this year. There seems to be a spectrum of roof water collecting, with a huge property retrofit on one end, and a few strung-together barrels on the other. If we could go back in time and rebuild our houses with rain catching systems, and use the collected water for some indoor uses as well as irrigation, I’m sure we could more than put a dent in California’s water problems. Unfortunately, no time machines, and it seems to be up to each of us to weigh the costs and benefits and figure out what we can reasonably do .

I’m not in the market for any major remodeling jobs in the foreseeable future, so was looking more in terms of easy DIY. Say a string of barrels here, a big cube-shaped tank there. I ran into a few minor disincentives, one being that I just hate to take a hacksaw to parts of the house; if I screw up the sawing off of the downspout, then I’d have to replace it and repaint it. Hassle. I don’t want to actually create house problems when they seem to do a pretty good job of creating themselves.

Most barrels that go under downspouts seem to be in the 55 to 100 gallon range, and in a moderate rainstorm that would fill up in just, to borrow a quote form Mr. Chekov in the new Star Trek movie, “Meenuts sir! Meenuts!” Which would mean I’d need to have a chain of connected barrels. In which case they would fill up in, well, a few more minutes. But that’s okay, because they come with overflow valves that you can direct away from your house. But, you have to have room for this chain o’ barrels—and admittedly, at the northwest corner of the house, I do. I could comfortably have three 100 gallon barrels, maybe four depending on how much I was willing to be bugged by a semi-obstruction when opening the gate. I have some other downspouts that could potentially go into barrels, with some creativity, but it depends whether it’s worth a lot of work and money, when the main payoff, I’ve determined, is mostly just feeling good.

A salesperson at a local irrigation supply retailer was telling me that rain water catchment systems make the most sense in places like California, where we go half the year without rain, but I disagree with that. What makes sense in place like California is huge catchment tanks built into the house that are used for irrigation and some indoor uses. These systems are much more common in some (more enlightened and forward-thinking) parts of the world, like Australia. My aunt recently moved into a new house in Queensland and it came readymade with a sleek 3000 liter (almost 800 gallon) tank that collects and filters roof water for use outdoors and in (see photo). My mom (mum) grew up in a house with a rain collecting tank underneath, and that was in the 30s and 40s. We Californians have some catching up to do.

In terms of the little barrel daisy-chains that a DIYer can do, I think that actually makes more sense in the type of climates where it rains some all year—fill the barrels, use the barrels, refill the barrels, reuse the barrels…Granted, that actually is us in winter sometimes. But as far as getting through a six-month rainless stretch, seems to me the most feasible thing is just planting appropriate plants that expect to be dry half the year.

Dry winter spells probably shouldn’t be the problem I make them out to be either. I don’t seem to have the knack for growing winter veggies, so no winter water need there, and once all my natives are established (I so look forward to that time) I don’t think they’ll be too fazed by less-than-soaked winters. It’s mostly the bulbs and wildflower seedlings that I’ll probably always ring my hands over. If they get started but then dry out, I’m afraid they’ll die. So yes, using rain barrels at those times instead of the tap would be nice, but mostly because I find I just love the feeling of pouring rainwater on the ground. It’s like I’m heroically stepping in for Mother Nature or Rain Miser or the Jet Stream, or whoever it is that controls winter weather, on an as-needed basis, and instead of substituting with crappy chlorinated tap water, I’m using the real thing.

I got really into it when our miracle October rain filled up my wheelbarrow and some Rubbermaid bins I’d carelessly left sitting out. And at this point, that remains the extent of my rain catching system. They’re not under downspouts, but they are overflowing. I know it will give me joy to dip a bucket in there and offer it to plants when they start drying out.

In reality, though? I won’t be giving them any water they wouldn’t have got anyway. I’ll just be staggering its delivery, because all the water that falls on our property goes into the yard. The water that falls where the wheelbarrow and bins are flows to a drain, which empties into soil. (It used to flow through a PVC pipe that was hidden in the ivy, out onto the sidewalk, but when I chopped out the ivy I also sawed off the pipe—I wasn’t too scared of hacksaws to do that.) All the roof downspouts empty into drains that lead somewhere in the yard—I didn’t make it that way, it’s just the way it was. Maybe a builder would say it’s wrong. I was talking to a guy from the city building department about a downspout that was draining too close to the foundation, and he recommended piping it not to the sidewalk, but: to the street! So apparently a rain-collecting slot in the collective conscious isn’t quite in place just yet.

But the main deterrent, even for small systems, is cost, due to it will essentially never pay for itself in literal, monetary terms. I found retail barrels to average more than $100 for 100-gallon barrels, and 300-gallon tanks are upwards of $1000. (!) A cool $800 can get you a sleek, low-profile 130-gallon tank. I wondered how long it would take for the water bill savings to compensate, so even though bills make my eyes glaze over pretty bad, and I usually don’t do any actual math on them, this month I calculated the per-gallon cost on my water bill. About .65 cents per gallon. So saving money is not the incentive, which bums me out, because if it were, people would do it. Granted, there are cheaper barrels out there, typically blue food-grade barrels, but a yard has several functions, one of which is looking nice, and the blue barrels, well, they’re not garden art. Being good to the planet and the local community is an incentive, but a properly selected native garden doesn’t impact on those terribly. So the entire incentive for me to spring for a little barrel system would really be the feeling of satisfaction when dipping into the rain supply. For fun, basically. And I may yet do it another year. For this year, I’m keeping the wheelbarrow and Rubbermaid bins out in the rain. If I win the lottery, I promise to have a colossal tank installed under the house.

R.I.P. Ceanothus

I'm sad writing this post because I'm saying goodbye to a Ceanothus I was rather fond of. I haven't had a lot of plant casualties and this one came as a surprise and a blow. Unfortunately I can't say exactly what species this poor guy was because I put him in way before I ever discovered native gardening. I've only been into native gardening as a concept for about two years, and as a practice for less, but I should have discovered it much earlier, because I've been in love with Ceanothus since the first time I laid eyes on it, during my first spring in San Francisco, 1995. I noticed a thicket of it blooming while I was running in Buena Vista Park and I asked everyone I knew what it was until I found someone who could tell me, and I've worshiped at the altar of California Lilac ever since.

So when we first moved into our house in the suburbs in 2002, I planted several along the slope above the driveway. I didn't know what kind because I was still too much of a rube to understand that there are different kinds; I just went to a nursery and bought a bunch of plants in gallons that said "Ceanothus" on them. They all got devoured by deer the very first night they were in the ground. I cried. What can I say, I was new to the suburbs, I was new to deer. But eventually, one of the plants miraculously recovered and grew back. The deer nipped it back for a while, but eventually seemed to leave it alone and it flourished. I couldn't have been more pleased with it because it ended up being a low growing kind that cascaded over the retaining wall beautifully.

Then we built a shed in front of it. I viewed this decision as utterly tragic, because I knew it would completely block off the sun from my one heroic Ceanothus survivor, but we really needed the storage space, because my sweetie happens to have a hobby that takes up the entire garage. So I braced myself for losing my old Ceanothus buddy then, but again it proved determined and miraculous, and simply grew toward the sun. Its crown was still certainly in full shade, but it ended up sending branches to the edge of the shed and then, again, cascaded them beautifully down the retaining wall. I was amazed and delighted, and the retaining wall really did benefit from those lush, shiny leaves.

But then a while ago, I'm gonna say it was six or eight weeks ago, I was planting some bulbs and grasses in the area and I noticed the Ceanothus' crown appeared to be a little buried from soil that was slipping down the hill. I figured that wasn't healthy, so sort of dug around the crown to uncover it. As far as I could tell, I wasn't causing any major disturbance to the plant, and I assumed I was helping it. Well, I guess I wasn't, because a few weeks later, I noticed it ailing terribly. I had noticed some whitish stuff in the soil when I was digging around the crown, so maybe some sort of fungus or mildew had already taken hold. Or maybe I did manage to traumatize the poor plant--whatever it was, I feeling guilty. When I saw the branches ailing I cut them back, hoping to allow the plant to focus its energy and rebound, but I'm afraid it kept going downhill. It's toast now and time to remove it, which will give me a heavy heart. It survived two known major assualts--being eaten and being denied sun--and then it died for essentially no known reason. Dang it! Gardening is hard!

Farewell, sweet Ceanothus. And I'm sorry I didn't even bother to take this cruddy looking old bucket out of the shot the last time I photographed you. *Sigh*

Waiting for Wildflowers

At some point over the holidays I managed to throw a whole bunch of wildflower seeds around the yard, and I hope to have some pretty pictures to show by springtime. Sowing over the holidays seems a little late, given that volunteers have been growing since the first rain October 12 and are looking pretty strong now, but I kept waiting because I wasn’t confident enough through December that the weather would be wet enough, and I didn’t want to have to haul out the hose just to keep seedlings alive. Of course there are no guarantees that we won’t have any severe dry spells for the rest of the winter, but since January through March are typically the wettest months, I thought/hoped it would be safe to sow seeds near around New Year. Two years ago, my first year of gardening with a partially ivy-free yard, I put seeds out on March 2, and it didn’t rain again at all that spring. Nevertheless, I kept the seedlings alive via watering, and even though I didn’t get a stunning flower show, I got enough that they self-sowed prolifically, and I’ll probably have some volunteers in that region every year from now on. And now that the whole front and side yard is ivy-free, and the back yard is lawn-free, I have a lot more space to introduce wildflowers. I like to use them because they are so audaciously showy, and largely responsible for making California’s spring as spectacular as it is. Another fun thing about growing lots of wildflowers is being able to bring them in as cut flowers--last spring my kitchen windowsill was a delight for about a month. (A kitchen table centerpiece bouquet would have been preferable, but too cat-accessible!)

I also put a lot of seeds in patio pots that are either now empty (having had their residents transferred to ground) or sparse (permanent resident not yet filled in), but I’m a bit skeptical whether I’ll get any germination in the pots, because the pots seem to have suddenly sprouted a sturdy crop of sparrows, juncos and towhees. How those guys spot the miniscule dirt-colored seeds in the soil is a mystery to me, but clearly they do. For that matter, the birds carpet the ground daily, but I’m hoping I scattered enough flower seeds that some will survive the pecking beaks of doom. (By the way, I don’t really associate the birds with doom—I love the birds and consider the yard theirs as much as mine, so if they decide I’m not having wildflowers this year, I accept that.)

And now a bit of info about and pictures of my wildflower experience of the last couple years. I started two years ago with two purchased seed mixes, one for shade and one for sun. The shade one consisted of Collinsia heterophylla (chinese houses), Clarkia unguiculata (elegant clarkia), Clarkia amoena (farewell-to-spring), Nemophila menziesii (baby blue eyes) and Nemophila maculata (five-spot). Only the first two succeeded and in low numbers—I guess my shade is a little excessive. The sunny mix contained Clarkia unguiculata, Gilia capitata (bluehead gilia), Layia platyglossa (tidy-tips), Escholzia californica (California poppy), Lupinus succulentus (arroyo lupine), and Phacelia tanacetifolia (tansy-leaf phacelia). All of these did okay the first rainless, hand-irrigated spring, and came back in much, much, much greater numbers the next year. Turns out Clarkia unguiculata, which indeed does okay in shade, does a million times better in full sun. I suspect the same is true for the Nemophilas.

Last fall, I had a dense carpet of volunteer seedlings, but only where the Ivy War had not been raging. This year, they’ve volunteered more extensively and prolifically, especially the poppies. And the Clarkias. Well, and the Gilias. I’m finally starting to understand why some gardeners complain about these flowers being “invasive.” However, I don’t really look at them that way, because weeding is an inevitability, and right now in my yard I have way, way more wildflower seedlings than weed seedlings. So pretty much it’s just the difference between culling wildflowers or pulling weeds, and I’d rather be culling wildflowers that are out-competing weeds than just pulling pesky weeds.

Last year's volunteer crop:

I augmented the side yard last year with a smattering of nursery-grown Clarkias, Nemophila, Layia, Phacelia viscida (sticky phacelia) and P. campanularia (desert bluebell). I also placed a few nursery-grown Clarkia concinna (red ribbons) in a planter box in heavy shade, and they lit it up beautifully. I also had a few nursery-grown Clarkia amoena hybrids, but I tried to not let them go to seed, because they actually struck me as a little too over-the-top and not really native-looking.

But except for those hybrids, last spring I let everything go to seed, leaving some to self-sow, and collecting some to scatter in the back yard and in pots. This year I’m buying no nursery-grown annuals, and waiting to see what comes from my scatter-shot sowing.

I’m also introducing a few more species this year from purchased seed packets: Lupinus bicolor (miniature lupine) and L. nanus (sky lupine), and Gilia tricolor (bird’s eye gilia). Of all the wildflowers I’ve grown so far, Lupines have volunteered the least vigorously and are the most susceptible to being eaten by something—snail possibly, but I’m not too good at pest i.d. For this reason, I tossed out a ton of the new lupine seeds, hoping even a small percentage succeeds. I probably would have increased their chances by boiling them, or at least roughing them up with sand, but I didn’t.

Design-wise, you have to want a pretty wild-looking garden to sow annuals like this. My style runs toward the naturalistic, so all I really do is try to cull tall things that show up near perimeters, and short things that come up away from perimeters.

I’ll report on this again in spring when I can say what worked well and what didn’t!

More Work Time

Though I am mostly at home with California-style seasons, the one thing I do find a bit tricky is the fact that the time of year when the yard requires most work (i.e. planting time) happens to coincide with the shortest days. I typically experience something close to agony when the sun sets on weekends, especially Sundays, because inevitably I’m nowhere near finished whatever I’m doing. I’ve maimed innocent plants by stomping around well past the time where I could actually see them. This weekend was different only in that I could thankfully note that it won’t get any worse.

I mention this because there seems to be a semi-common misconception that this happy milestone falls on or around December 21. But don’t delay celebrating: the evenings are getting longer already! The solstice is the shortest day, but the earliest sunset is before, about two weeks at our latitude, and the latest sunset about two weeks after. I was raised with a pack of science-minded siblings and never allowed to harbor misconceptions regarding celestial goings-on—not that I necessarily absorbed the mechanisms, in this case no doubt some perturbation in the planet’s rotation and/or orbit—and we always marked December 7 as the dusk-sodden day after which evenings would brighten. That was in Montana, and way down here in the Bay Area, it would be a day or two different. I couldn’t seem to find to-the-second data online, but it doesn’t get earlier/grimmer than this weekend. From here on out, our yard work time increases! Unless you’re the type who’s out there at the crack of dawn—I am, um, not.

That said, I don’t think there’s a whole lot left to do! Every plant that was ready for the ground is in it, bulbs are in, a few drainage issues are managed to the extent that they will be this year...The only thing I ran out of time for this weekend was seeds. Pity, because there is a string of lovely rainstorms in the 15-day forecast, and I hope, hope, hope there won’t be any major rain stoppages for the rest of the season. That would mean that once the seeds go in, I can in theory do things other than yard work on weekends. Not that there’s anything I’d rather be doing, but there are other things in need of doing. (I wonder if I can remember how to clean the house—where do I keep the vacuum? Do I have one?) I find it alarming that the yard does take so much time, but this is only fall #2 since the Ivy War. I couldn’t do everything the first year (in addition to the Ivy War, there was also Operation Lawn Begone and two neglected slopes in need of reclaiming), but this year should pretty much get me to where, going forward, I’ll just be doing maintenance and refinements. Some time soon I will sprinkle seeds of annuals in strategic locations, including patio pots (things like baby blue eyes and tidy tips are amazing in pots—I had better pictures, but they were lost in a computer melt-down), but I had also wanted to sow flats of all kinds of perennial seeds I collected last year. I don’t know, though. If I sow them, I will have to babysit them, pot them up…Possibly that is not the kind of thing gardeners with day jobs should attempt, regardless of sunset time. Unless gardening is their day job. I wish. Well, I’ll see. When I get out my little box o’ seeds to scatter the annuals, the lure of the other seed packets may be too much to resist.

Remembering the Ivy War

One-year anniversary of the end to major ivy fighting marked by ceremony, controversy


The sun rose bright and warm but the mood was somber as the yard’s native plants, nonnative trees and human resident gathered to mark the first anniversary of VS Day (Victory in the South), the last day of major fighting in the Ivy War. Veterans and residents recalled the gruesome battle of the Sunday After Thanksgiving, 2008, which raged from morning well into the night. Attendees recalled that resistance forces had been advancing along the southern front, battling entrenched ivy roots for weeks, and the four-day weekend associated with Thanksgiving had been set as a the target for victory.

The final battle was especially brutal, due to the refusal of General Spod (Swinging Pick of Doom) to budge on the end-of-weekend deadline. At the time, the general famously pointed out that war strategists had originally set November 1 as the deadline, and that this had already been missed by weeks, thus wasting several good rainfalls that would have benefitted new native plants, had they been able to move in on ivy-vacated ground. “We missed November 1, but we’re sure a hell not going to be out here in the trenches come December 1,” Spod told embedded reporters at the time. “To any critics out there, I would just say that if you spent one day out here on the ivy battlefield, you’d understand why we don’t plan to come out here again next weekend. The war ends here. Today.” As that Sunday battle raged, troops kept a nervous eye on the sun, undeterred in its westward movement toward its 4:51 setting, one of earliest of the year. Once the sun disappeared, the troops made the controversial decision to set up a work light, arousing neighbors’ concern for the human resident’s mental state.

Critics of the way the final battle unfolded have pointed out that substantial risks were taken with the wellbeing of both the large juniper trees, who suffered repeated pick blows to their root systems, and of the human resident, who suffered wrist and elbow tendonitis and lower back pain. At the anniversary ceremony, the human resident gave the following account of the battle: “My wrists and elbows were killing, man. My back was so sore I couldn’t stand up straight from noon on. I only got two bathroom breaks and no lunch!” But Spod could not launch attacks without the human resident’s aid and insisted on not backing down. “After the sun went down, I expected to be able to go back to the fort,” said the human resident. “But no, next thing I know the *%$# work light is out of the shed and set up on the sidewalk. The cord was draped over the fence and everyone was afraid Spod was going to slice it and get me electrocuted. It was *%#$ hectic, man. Plus the light was really directional, so everywhere you looked there were shadows, and it was *%$# impossible to tell the *%$# juniper roots from the *%$# ivy roots. I didn’t think anyone was gonna get out of there alive.”

The juniper trees, also attending the memorial, added, “We lost probably a dozen or more good roots, just because there was ivy wrapped around them. The ivy tried to hide that way and we were the collateral damage. A certified arborist had been called in at some point during the war and advised General Spod not to sever any of our roots that were over 2 inches in diameter, but some got cut alright—maybe not severed, but cut up pretty good.”

Embeds witnessing the southern front battlefields did at the time report heavy juniper root damage, filing grisly accounts of the shocking red root interiors exposed and mixing with the ivy’s tan roots in a tangle of rhizomatous carnage that littered the yard and sidewalk.

The battle finally ended that Sunday at 10pm, and the front was declared liberated. Troops were too fatigued and demoralized to raise a “mission accomplished” banner and unceremoniously returned to their forts. The human resident recalled the battle aftermath: “I was so tired, I thought I might puke, but I didn’t. I probably wouldn’t have made it if it weren’t for the other human resident, my sweetie, greeting my return with a massive plate of pasta and a DVD of Robot Chicken Star Wars sketches. Man, that *%$# saved me, man.”

President A. Manzanita addressed the crowd at the memorial, urging assembled plants to reflect on their freedom to spread and grow roots, free of ivy repression, and to give thanks for their cushy garden conditions. “Let us remember the resistance fighters who cleared the yard, and look to a future where all the yard’s plants—newly established natives and surviving exotics alike—join roots and thrive and in harmony under the banner of equality.” Manzanita added, “The ivy war was fought so that we native plants may enjoy luxuries that wild plants don’t. In our great yard, Yarrow and Salvia bloom into fall, and Needlegrasses stay green all summer.”

Later, in answer to charges that peacekeeping troop levels are at a season high, Corner Yard Chief of Staff Trichostema lanatum replied, “While it’s true that peacekeeping missions uproot ivy insurgencies every week, we must remember that not a single perennial or shrub has been lost to ivy attacks. Though we mourned a handful of annual wildflower casualties last spring, let’s remember that we lost more annuals to the one Gopher Incident than to all ivy explosions combined.” Lanatum also acknowledged that several Allium and Triteleia families had been rousted by anti-ivy forces, but added that all were successfully relocated, being dormant at the time.

Protests briefly interrupted VS Day ceremonies, with angry plants charging that the Grindelia stricta community had been unfairly exiled. President Manzanita replied that the Grindelias’ ouster was in the best interest of the yard’s security. “Let’s face it, the Grindelia were attempting a coup. We basically had a ‘meet the new boss, same as the old boss’ situation on our hands. The Grindelia was the next ivy.”

Many children of the Grindelia, who now number in the hundreds, called the charge a gross exaggeration and vowed to keep drawing attention to their cause. A nearby Saliva, who refused to give her hybrid name, seemed to sympathize. “Hey, I had my limbs cut way back by the hand clipper unit, and for what—because me and the Grindelias were hanging out over the sidewalk? I’m lucky to still be here.”

Still, most of the ceremony attendees, many accompanied by seedlings, projected a solemn, yet joyous attitude one year after the ivy liberation. A non-native Azalea, a long-time denizen of the yard, remarked on the post-ivy standard of living. “I’m doing better than ever,” she said. “I don’t know why. Maybe I get more water without ivy roots sucking it up. Or maybe it’s just an attitude thing—anyway, I now bloom from the beginning of November right into May, and I never used to do that.”

Local bird populations seemed to concur. Said an American Robin, “I never used to stop in this yard. With so little space to forage on, it just wasn’t worth it. Now there are worms and bugs to go around.” A nearby Lesser Goldfinch agreed. “Now that there’s no ivy, the ladder can be set up under just about any tree and it seems like there’s a bird feeder everywhere you look. Not to mention fresh Yarrow, Buckwheat and other seeds. It’s like a whole buffet. Me and my buddies practically live here.”

The day’s memorial ended with a Christmas-light vigil, intended to commemorate both VS Day and the anniversary this week of the Christmas Light Uprising that started the war.

Bulb Time

I’m no longer so optimistic about the prospects of a wet winter, but nevertheless, the weekend-after-Thanksgiving plan is to get a heap more bulbs in the ground. I probably go a little crazy on bulbs. How can you not? Last year I put in 250, distributed around the yard. I got them in fairly late—Christmastime—owing to delays associated with the protracted Ivy War. And bulbs were last in the planting queue, so that I wouldn’t have to worry about inadvertently digging them up while planting other things. Despite their somewhat late planting, they did not disappoint—March brought pretty pink powder puffs of Allium unifolium, and by April the whole yard was dotted with the ultramarine of Triteleia laxa (Ithuriel’s Spear), with a dash of variously-colored, swoon-inducing Calochortus (superbus and venustus) sprinkled in. For reasons I don’t understand, and someone with more botanical knowledge can maybe fill me in, the Calochortus produced several blooms per bulb, whereas the Allium and Triteleia produced one inflorescence per bulb. This year though, I’m hoping for a real treat, because I know these bulbs have been busy multiplying. I occasionally accidentally dig them up while pursuing ivy insurgents, and have been thrilled to find three to six bulbs, depending on conditions, wherever I’d planted one. This in just one year!

And this season I’m adding red and yellow to the bulb mix. The guidelines I follow on designing with color are as follows: more is more, and colors can’t clash. (I especially adhere to these rules in the context of gardens, but come to think of it, I pretty much apply them in most contexts—like Fiesta dishes for example, but don’t even get me started.) The red will be coming from one Dichelostemma ida-maia, and the yellow from Triteleia ixioides. I don’t have a planting plan, per se, just gonna go out with a box of bulbs in one hand and a trowel in the other and start planting. If spring brings yellow, pink and red side by side, that’s more than fine with me. For more info on these beauties, see the descriptions I wrote for Garden Natives here.


I am a bit worried about the rain situation; the four inches my rain gauge collected in October, which I’d then celebrated as a wondrous miracle, are a distant memory now, but it did induce last year's bulbs to start growing—not to mention starting a veritable carpet of wildflower seedlings. Someone knowledgeable told me not to worry, that the bulbs could sort of “push pause” and then resume growing when rain returns, but I haven’t quite been confident enough with that advice to refrain from watering. Therefore, I’ve been setting a sprinkler throughout the yard—I hate to, but I’m just too scared of letting the bulbs croak. As it is, I’m nervous I haven’t sprinkled enough. It’s a lot of dang hassle moving the hose around the yard at intervals—it takes like a day. As for the annual seedlings, a few patches in harder-to-haul-the-hose-to areas did bite the dust, but it’s not too tragic, because I have tons of collected seed squirreled away in envelopes, so I’ll simply throw out a second wave of annuals later when the rain seems more reliable.


In the event that the El Nino predictions are off and the rains never get very reliable…well, I’ll keep watering. People make fun of me because I’m dragging a hose around after touting my drought tolerant native garden, but come on people, I didn’t mean this time of year! I was puzzling over this subject with a dude at my work, who is a harsh critic of my decision to water, and we were saying, Well what happens during dry years in nature? My conclusion was, Nature doesn’t care if she loses a bunch of bulbs or anything else once in a while, because she has all the time in the world. But the gardener is attached to the plants she lovingly placed (not to mention purchased), ergo the gardener hauls out the hose during dry spells. I hope to not need to much longer.

Sun Sun, Go Away

Dang, so much for my super-soaker winter prediction! Just kidding, I know there’s still plenty of time—as pointed out by the weather blog I’m anxiously following these days. Plus we are still way, way over normal rainfall to date, which is a great and magical thing. It’s just that I was hoping the ground wouldn’t have a chance to dry back out, because as part of my Yard 2.0 plan, I am still putting in a lot of new plants. (Last year’s Yard 1.0 left plenty of room for both additions and do-overs.) I wanted to get all plants in as early as possible so they could spend lots of time establishing and therefore need very, very little water next summer, and I have about half in now, but looks like I will need to babysit them until the rains come back to stay. I have a great drip system that was installed by the eminently knowledgeable Garden Natives during the summer, so that will be a boon, but some of the new plants are out of its reach. Also, after the October rain, the entire yard became a carpet of wildflower seedlings, and even though I will need to cull a huge number (*sniff!*), I can’t bear to let the rest keel over from thirst, which means I’ll probably set out the old fashioned sprinkler a few times. I know sprinklers use an outrageous amount of water, which makes me really wish I had planned and installed a rain water catchment system. I had abandoned the idea on the grounds that it was too much hassle and money, but now I realize if I’d done it, I’d have hundreds of gallons of free water just waiting to go out on those new plants. Also, I accidentally left my wheelbarrow and a Rubbermaid bin out in the October storm, and it felt so eco-friendly pouring it on my plants, I got sort of hooked. Plus, as every gardener knows, rain water is infinitely more beneficial than tap water. I’m told by a Very Smart Dude I know (my brother), that this is because rain picks up nitrogen from the atmosphere. So I’ll be shopping rain barrels soon, and will post whatever I come up with here.