We’re past the dog days and into Indian Summer…and all the water I was so earnestly partnering a few months ago has skedaddled like a philandering lover. Not a drop of rain in weeks, it seems…I’m using dishwater on my front-yard flower beds and tapping the rain barrel to keep the bushes and trees of my baby forest garden going. Thanks be, they’re showing no signs of stress, perhaps due to the masses of chunky organic matter I packed into their planting holes to catch and hold irrigation. The flowers and herbs in my rain garden are thriving similarly, and meanwhile the blackberries, planted above that breached stormwater pipe, are rooting their canes madly in the stony earth…the Baltimore Sustainability Network is adopting a pot containing 26 canes! I only wish my container garden were thriving so; it seems to dry out as fast as I water it.
But all this good news is thanks to the water-partnering work done this spring, when I was busy finding ways to mitigate the builders’ loam and bare-minimal topsoil on which my lawn was subsisting. I can’t wait to start the serious earthworks when the rains return, and to see their impact next year!
Partner the Water 