Monday, August 25, 2008

Rainy Days and Grateful Mondays

Any chance of rain is welcome. These clouds helped reduce water use this week and lowered the electric bill.

It kinda bothers me when I hear the weather forecasters apologizing for rain in the forecast. I look forward to rain, and we have had a little this week. Not much—only about .7” over three or four days, depending on how you count. But that has been enough.

I was able to forgo watering the lawn this week (even if the neighbors didn’t), and I only had to water the least drought-tolerant planties once since Wednesday. The rest are doing very well indeed on the available water.

But wait! Isn’t water the new oil? Why is ELAB watering at all?

OK. Suna did a really good job picking low-maintenance (if not xeric) plants, but we have added more color this year. Some of these, particularly the lobellias that have already gone, the sweet potato vine, and the coleuses that get the most sun are thirsty buggers. I don’t water the lawn more than once a week, no matter how it complains, and I try to limit watering the garden to what is absolutely necessary. I don’t want to waste water. You won’t find runoff from the lawn watering flowing down the gutter to the storm drain, but I do water enough to keep my little planties from shriveling up and blowing away.

So that is why I am grateful for any rain we get—even when it storms and floods. This week’s rain didn’t do anything to alleviate our first stage drought, but it did let us hold our own for another week. The overcast also kept the temperatures down into the lower-to-mid-nineties. That reduced evaporation and kept the air conditioning from running quite so much. For all of that, I am grateful this Monday.

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