Drought Intolerance

In many ways, this year four of the drought in California feels like the first bad year.  This has been the year of mandated cutbacks for people in my water district.  Our water agencies have been asked by the Governor of California to reduce output by 20 to 25% ( I'm too lazy to check the exact percentage) and I read in the paper that during the month of June we were successful at doing that.  Confession: I didn't actually read the article.  Just the headline.  But hooray for us, I guess.  As someone who believes in conservation of resources I can celebrate that.

But as a gardener, I have to admit I hate having to conserve water by not watering my lawn and plants.  It’s become vogue to “let your grass go gold” but there’s nothing that causes the gardener in me more dissonance than dead, crunchy grass and sad, wilting plants. 

My side yard hasn't been watered all summer
because the spray from the sprinklers frequently
lands on the driveway - a big no-no.

The other day my daughter and I went to the backyard and played this complicated game with a balloon that we call “Don’t Let it Hit the Ground.”  In this game, the main objective is to hit the balloon to the other person and that person is responsible for not letting the balloon hit the ground.  It’s a challenging game of physical endurance and mental fortitude under normal circumstances but in this drought we have the extra obstacle of dealing with balloons that hit parched grass that has grown hard and sharp.  I kid you not, we popped three balloons by letting them hit the ground before we postponed the game for a lack of rain delay. 

Right now I’m allowed to water my lawn on Saturday mornings before 6:00 a.m. or after 8:00 p.m. and that’s it.  I’m allowed to water my plants and trees with drip irrigation 3 days a week.  Now you might be thinking that watering your lawn correctly once a week should still allow for a lawn to be relatively green.  And you’d be correct.   However, there are large sections of my yard where the sprinklers either don’t reach or provide inadequate/inconsistent coverage and the result is an unappealing mishmash of green and gold on the level of what the Green Bay Packers uniforms look like.  But less green and less gold.  So, not really like the Packers uniforms at all, I guess.

It looks like a river of gold running through the back yard.

The water restrictions make it pretty difficult to get any new plants established as even native and drought tolerant plants need supplemental watering their first year.  As a result, I really haven't planted much of anything since this spring before the restrictions were put in place.  Which has really led to a lack of blogging for me.  And, if I'm totally honest, a lot of the fun of gardening has been sapped from me this summer too.  It's been a summer of garden maintenance more than flexing my creativity and working toward completion of my long range vision.

The last thing I planted: ground cover of Dwarf Mondo Grass with three Japanese maples and a Dogwood.
I covered this part of the lawn with a thick mulch of leaves last fall and that killed most of the grass.

The hope is that the mondo grass will form a thick, green carpet that takes significantly less water than normal grass would.

The water restrictions are hard enough to deal with on their own.  Being such a hot topic (pun not really intended) people are making it even harder by generally being lame to each other.  What this drought has done is turn people into tattle-tales and guilty parties.  There's a group discussion on my neighborhood's "Next Door" web site that talks about how to turn your neighbors into the government if you think they are wasting water.  Whether that allegation is substantiated or not, the Water Resources Board sends you a nice little notice telling you you've been flagged and that they are going to come inspect your property and could fine you $100, $200, or $500 depending on how many times they find you doing something wrong.  The comments on this message board range from "Give 'em hell" to "wouldn't it be better just to talk to your neighbor?" to "you all are a bunch of Nazis".  Because every internet forum must prove Godwin's Law to be correct.

A typical Sacramento front yard.  I suspect this particular neighbor is happy about the drought because this is how his yard looked even before we had water restrictions.  Now he fits right in and looks like a model citizen!

As I mentioned before, I'm happy to conserve water and I believe it's my duty to be part of the solution, but it's ridiculous to me that people that know how to get the most out of their grass (deep, infrequent watering coupled with leaving the grass taller for example) are automatically targets for busy body neighbors that assume you're breaking the law because your lawn doesn't quite look like a hay field that's been shorn to the ground like the picture above.

From my tone, you might have guessed it: someone turned me in.  I'm waiting for a visit from the Water Resources Board any day now.  I'll be happy to show them the timer schedule for my sprinklers though.

In the meantime, I'm going to wash my car.  That always makes it rain.  Oh wait, we're not allowed to wash our cars anymore.  Well, maybe it's time to brush  up on my rain dancing.

Just Live With It

I’ve been overwhelmed with tasks.  We have moved in to our new place and unpacked most of our boxes.  We’re still in the process of remodeling the 69-year-old kitchen so there is still a sense of disarray in our household.  But we’re getting “there” even though we don’t quite know where exactly “there” is or what it will feel like when we settle there.

With some of the more pressing issues taken care of I am slowly turning my attention to the yard.  But the yard is larger than I’m used to and I don’t know where to start.  I haven’t been here long enough to discover all the things that make this yard unique so I'm reluctant to commit to anything.  For instance, our recent rains revealed that there are a few places close to our patio where the water does not drain.  At all.  I had already considered putting in some kind of rock pathway beginning right where the water puddles so that idea might have “gone down the drain” . . . unlike the water.    

The best advice I’ve ever received about garden design was in Julie Moir Messervy’s “The Inward Garden.”  I’m loosely paraphrasing here, but she said that a gardener should just live with their garden for a while.  That advice has been on my mind lately as I’ve been eager to tackle new projects.  I keep telling myself to be patient and let the ideas come to me as I spend time working in the yard, as I get familiar with the sunlight, as I live through the seasons and experience the patterns of nature here. 

But I don’t think Messervy was trying to say “do nothing” either.  So I am keeping up on tasks like mowing the lawn (which I really don’t enjoy doing), and picking from the abundance of weeds.  I have also set up my compost bins and planted three dwarf Japanese maples that I brought over from our old house. 

Last night, however, I had a spare hour-and-a-half after work so I decided to tackle a small project.  At some point, along this trellised fence that marks the divide between my property and the elderly lady’s next door, there was a flower bed.  I imagine it must have looked beautiful in the spring several years ago.  But now the only word that comes to mind is “dilapidated”.  The lattice work needs to be repaired.  The weedy grass needs to be pulled.  Irrigation needs to be addressed. 

From the look of it, I thought the house next door was empty when we bought this house.  It is not.

I started by pulling out handfuls of grass and discovered that buried within the grass were various types of edging materials – bricks and red cement edgers.  I have no formal training in archaeology, but I’m pretty sure that these buried materials were placed right against the base of the fence to prevent the overgrown grass and weeds from coming in from the other side of the fence.  

I dislike this type of edging.  I dislike it a lot.  

I assume that the elderly lady (whom I have yet to even see) no longer cares about gardening or keeping her exterior in tip-top shape.  I may help her with this in small ways if I can but I don’t want to assume that my help would be welcomed until I’ve met her.  I’m not a fan of using weed blocking fabrics, but this might actually be a perfect place for using it. 

After the grass was mostly pulled out I was able to get a better look at the irrigation pipe that so prominently stands out in this small bed.  I could definitely take this down to ground level and still have access to water here but for now I think I will just add a Y valve and attach a drip irrigation timer to it and leave the other valve open for attaching a hose. 

Irrigation is always a first concern when planting here since we very rarely get rain between May and October.

This weekend I’ll try to repair or replace the lattice work and install the weed fabric.  I will pull out the grass roots that I missed.  I will use the weed whacker to trim the edges.  I might even plant a few Moon Flower seeds that I harvested unless I simply can’t escape the siren’s call of my favorite nursery and need to take the plunge and buy something that is already green.  And then I’ll live with it for a while.