Effective Rainfall

I was cleaning the house recently and ran across a book on water. The title is “Water in Plain Sight.” I'm not sure how I acquired it — maybe at the last Master Gardener Plant Exchange. But it came at a perfect time for me to read.

Every rainy winter day, I would look out and think of how much rainwater is getting wasted, especially down the driveway, onto the sidewalk, where it goes under, and eventually onto the bay and the ocean — filthy and unused.

Then, in the summer, we have many months of no rain, the aquifer under us drying out, and we must irrigate from the municipal water that we have to pay for; and there it is falling from the sky, clean and free water.

Every year, I've tried to save as much rainwater as possible and keep as much of it on our suburban property by using different methods. I've had five 50-gallon water barrels under 2 different downspouts. When they get full, I painstakingly move some water into 1-gallon containers (formerly milk, bleach or water). I do make sure that this water is only used in the landscape around the trees or shrubberies, nothing that will have direct contact with edible parts of the plants. I've also extended the swales around the yard by digging depressions or trenches about 1-2 ft deep and covering them with wood chips. But I always I feel I need to do more.

This book discusses “building soil, restoring land, and working with the water cycle for a cooler, wetter planet.” I had just started reading when the holiday parties started coming. It was my turn to host the family Christmas lunch, which took a lot of time and energy. The first chapter is called The Elephant Pools and discusses how water reappeared in a remote corner in Zimbabwe. There's a section of this area where the elephants used it to bathe and cover themselves in mud to protect their skin from the sun. The water did not appear magically from somewhere, nor did they get more rainfall. But rather, it was channeled to collect in this land. The rainfall had been made more effective. The book is a collection of stories from different countries, and I can't wait to see what other stories I will uncover.

Meanwhile, I filled another empty 1-gallon milk jug from the rain barrel that I will use to water the garden in the dry months.

photo by Tina Saravia