Drought Prayer: "Dear Lord, Thank you for the much needed rains. Now please send some to my friends. Amen."
Well, it finally happened. Around 4:00 the sky turned dark, the wind picked up and the distinct smell of rain filled the air. It started pouring buckets before I could even sit down to the radar screen.All of my water tubs, and even three trash cans are now filled with rainwater.
So, who's going to get the extra water? Usually I save the rain water for potted plants, but this time it will be used for the smaller trees that have suffered. Very little water has reached the subsoil for the past 5 months. Now that the surface is moist, any additional water would glide through the top several soil layers and into the deeper roots.
I collect rain water in other ways. This latest 1.3" rain made it down 10 inches in one of my swales. Another larger depression in the back yard was moist all the way to 14 inches. I've designed roughly half of the back yard into natural depressions designed to save on watering for good reason. As you can see in this next picture, a natural woodland garden has a LOT of vegetation, so saving rain is essential for keeping things lush.
You can see one of my rain barrels in this picture. This understory American holly will be getting an extra 20 gallons from collected rain.
You can't see it, but this native Nuttall oak is really suffering. It will get about 50 gallons of collected rain water.
It was so nice to walk around the garden and see everything 'happy'. Even the front agave beds looked relieved.
I'll finish with this final shot of another agave bed. Blue daze blooms in the front.
Thanks for stopping by! David/ :-)
