Liar

Water is relentless. A little drip can do a lot of damage over time.

Photo source: Pixadaus

Nobody believes me Liar

Why don’t they leave me alone?

—Freddy Mercury

Remember last week when I said I fixed the sink, and there were no leaks. I lied. There is an insidious seep leak. It takes a couple of days to leak enough to ruin paper products,

So I spent much of today on my back in the bathroom. All to no avail. The leak persists at the end of the day. Next Saturday, I’ll have to go to Home Depot for a couple of replacement parts.

“Why didn’t you get them today and be done with it?” you may ask. Well, I was the only one home today, and we were short one front door. (It was in the garage with a fresh coat of marine poly drying to a smooth, wonderous sheen.) So I was stranded home alone.

At least I know what I’ll be doing next week, and we can use the sink in the interim—as long as we keep a drip catcher underneath.

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.