Keeping Rain Water

More rain!  And that is not a complaint at all. 

When I checked the weather forecast for this week it showed declining temperatures with some chances for rain.  The chances for rain were pretty low.  The forecast details said to expect severe thunderstorms.  Instead we have rain - a lot of rain.  And it's not severe thunderstorms.  It is a steady warm downpour.  It is exactly what the plants need, especially the trees. 

All of my big trees, and one of my dwarf fruit trees, had started dropping leaves due to the extreme heat and lack of water.  This is not a good thing since my big trees are all silver maples.  And I wasn't too happy about the pear tree either.

I've been looking at the way the land on my lot slopes.  There are really only a couple of areas that hold water for any length of time unless we are getting flooding rains.  This is good and bad.  And then the city started laying new water/sewer lines this spring which resulted in all the drainage ditches along our road being dug out.  And they didn't put them back the way they were.  The drainage ditch along the front of my yard is now shallower and a good 2 foot wider than it had been. 

There are some solutions for this that don't involve running to the city to complain.  But they are going to take some time and effort on my part.  Fortunately, the crew running the pipe laying are friendly guys.  And they don't mind, at all, that I want any "extra" dirt that they have.  And they aren't anywhere near done. 

So one of the parts, is that when they come back I'll ask them to dig the ditch a little deeper.  I will take responsibility for reseeding it and getting it to grow.  And I'll ask them to place the dirt from digging it out on the inside edge of the drainage ditch.  If they can't/won't do this, then when they are done, I'll start doing it a little at a time.  The bottom of the ditch needs to be level with the culvert going under my driveway and then angled to let the water naturally flow to its outlet, a creek at the other end of the block.  I can't do anything about the other yards but I can do something about mine.  And my neighbor is likely to do something about hers because otherwise her entire yard floods.  If I break the task up into segments it won't be anywhere near as hard.

Another part is to take the dirt that they are giving me and use it to make a long swale along the inside of the drainage ditch.  It won't be a high one, probably about 6 inches or so.  It will be enough to delay the rainwater on it's way to the drainage ditch and allow more of it to soak into the yard where the plants need it.

Then I'll work around each tree to work swales in that work with the contour of the yard near them.  For example, that pear tree - the ground to the north of it is sloped enough that any water just flows right off of the spot where the tree is.  And it keeps flowing down to water the dogwood just north of it.  Great for the dogwood but not so great for the pear tree.  So I'm going to build a swale just to the north of the pear tree that will allow the water more time to soak into the ground there.  I'll be doing this for all of the big trees as well. 

The swales won't help with drought conditions directly but they will help the trees/plants get more water when there is water.  Even if the water comes from my hose.  The real bonus during drought time will be that the plants will get as much of the water as possible.  And that will cut down on the amount of water I'm using.  That will be a bonus when I'm using rainwater from barrels.

But it's a balancing act.  I don't want to cause the yard to start holding deep pools of water whenever it rains.  And I don't want more water holding around the foundation of the house.  Right now the house, and the area about 2 foot out from it, are the low point in the yard.  Sixty years of rainfall with no gutters will do that.  But fixing that is a whole 'nother post.  It's another one of those piece by piece projects of mine.

Anyways, since climate change is coming, and because my budget is miniscule, planning to use naturally, freely available resources to keep my garden going seems like common sense.  For the time and energy I put in now, I will be able to put in a lot less time/energy/money in the future. 

BTW, I said climate change.  I don't know if it's getting warmer or colder.  I don't really care beyond a certain point because it's happening and there's not much that can be done about it. I'm not so egotistical that I think that I am the cause of it, or that I can do anything to change naturally occurring planetary changes.  I do the things that I can so that I don't contribute to making it worse - mainly because those things are common sense things to do for multiple reasons.  I do know that weather patterns are changing around here.  And I'm trying to adapt so that we won't be blindsided by something that could be avoided.  I try to plan for the future, not just right now.

I hope you all are having a good day, wherever you are.