Pray for rain
Apr. 8th, 2019 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beehammerOne of the side effects of spending the winter planting all the things is that inevitably, summer rolls around, also inevitably, it won't rain nearly as often as it needs to, and you'll have to water all the things.
It hasn't rained like at all this spring. Maybe a couple days here and there, barely enough to fill up the two rain barrels with an A+ gutter situation. Drip-line irrigation is, of course, an option, but it's fuck-ugly, plastic tends not to hold up more than a season or two with the sun going, and also requires you to have some goddamned idea of what you'll be doing with your plants instead of just wandering around going "I'm tired, guess this is where I'm planting this tree."
So I've been hand-watering everything, which is just. Ugh. Not in general--you kind of have to be out there every other day or so to keep tabs on things anyway, you know?--but the simple fact that it's been every. goddamned. day. Everything needs to be watered, every day, no exceptions. It's mentally exhausting. I have so many more interesting and rewarding plant-related things I could be doing with that time--there are things that need repotting, and seedlings that need transplanting, and new seeds I want to start--but that's all gonna have to wait until after I'm done fucking watering the things I already have.
So I've spent the past few days particularly resenting it, because the weather's gotten hotter, and more humid (but not in a way that stops things from drying out, somehow), and I've had jackshit in terms of free time, and the rain barrels have been empty for a week which means I'm using the hose, which I always feel guilty about.
But at the same time, the plants are doing well. Everything that I mail-ordered except for one tree is growing. The okra are somehow flowering even though they're barely a foot tall, the peach tree has blossoms on it, and the tomatoes are finally ripening. The passion flower vine has a bunch of fritillary caterpillars on it, there've been monarchs all over the place, and there's always at least three types of bee visible during prime pollinating hours. Cleaning things up with the weedwhacker as they get tall enough to be annoying instead of having to bust out the lawnmower has meant that the native wildflowers are getting a chance to do their thing instead of never getting quite tall enough to produce many blossoms.
It's less the ugh of "why did I do this to myself" and more the ugh of "I really need the weather to throw me a bone right now." Just a couple days of enough rain that everything gets good and soaked, that I don't have to spend an hour watering everything, that I can fertilize without worrying about scorching the plants--that's literally all I'm asking, weather. It's not too much, is it? I feel like it shouldn't be.
It hasn't rained like at all this spring. Maybe a couple days here and there, barely enough to fill up the two rain barrels with an A+ gutter situation. Drip-line irrigation is, of course, an option, but it's fuck-ugly, plastic tends not to hold up more than a season or two with the sun going, and also requires you to have some goddamned idea of what you'll be doing with your plants instead of just wandering around going "I'm tired, guess this is where I'm planting this tree."
So I've been hand-watering everything, which is just. Ugh. Not in general--you kind of have to be out there every other day or so to keep tabs on things anyway, you know?--but the simple fact that it's been every. goddamned. day. Everything needs to be watered, every day, no exceptions. It's mentally exhausting. I have so many more interesting and rewarding plant-related things I could be doing with that time--there are things that need repotting, and seedlings that need transplanting, and new seeds I want to start--but that's all gonna have to wait until after I'm done fucking watering the things I already have.
So I've spent the past few days particularly resenting it, because the weather's gotten hotter, and more humid (but not in a way that stops things from drying out, somehow), and I've had jackshit in terms of free time, and the rain barrels have been empty for a week which means I'm using the hose, which I always feel guilty about.
But at the same time, the plants are doing well. Everything that I mail-ordered except for one tree is growing. The okra are somehow flowering even though they're barely a foot tall, the peach tree has blossoms on it, and the tomatoes are finally ripening. The passion flower vine has a bunch of fritillary caterpillars on it, there've been monarchs all over the place, and there's always at least three types of bee visible during prime pollinating hours. Cleaning things up with the weedwhacker as they get tall enough to be annoying instead of having to bust out the lawnmower has meant that the native wildflowers are getting a chance to do their thing instead of never getting quite tall enough to produce many blossoms.
It's less the ugh of "why did I do this to myself" and more the ugh of "I really need the weather to throw me a bone right now." Just a couple days of enough rain that everything gets good and soaked, that I don't have to spend an hour watering everything, that I can fertilize without worrying about scorching the plants--that's literally all I'm asking, weather. It's not too much, is it? I feel like it shouldn't be.
