Maybe this isn't really a gardening post, but it did happen in my garden and because of my gardening, so I figure I'll report on it.
A couple of weeks ago, I decided I should neaten up the section of the yard in front of the front tool shed. This area has traditionally been cleverly camouflaged with many old overgrown forsythia bushes that either I or my neighbour perioidically attack viciously with clippers and pruners. Forsythias are very resilient, especially when they are probably 40 years old with trunks the size of small trees and they always came back strongly.
In early summer, I decided to cut them right down to the ground so they would grow up looking like real bushes again. but having done that, I thought - why not get rid of a lot of the really huge ones and just leave the smaller ones to grow on. Fortunately, I had my strong nephew working for me this summer, and he had a good time one afternoon getting about six of the monsters out. And I decided that in their place I will plant a row of cedars as a hedge next spring. The cedars and the small tameable forsythia should look nice together.
A good plan, but this means that an area that was very sheltered from view, where I had been in the habit of storing bags of left-over container soil, mulch, etc. is quite open to the public eye. We moved some of the material to the back, but I wanted to keep some bags of mulch near the front garden because that's where I will use them next spring. so we just moved those a bit under some over-hanging bushes and I decided to use some pieces of burlap, leftover from a project some years ago, to cover them up a bit more.
I found those burlap pieces in an old plastic bag in the back tool shed, carried them up to the front, pulled out the first piece, and shook it out. Much to my horror and surprise, an animal fell out of the burlap and took off very quickly into the undergrowth. All I saw clearly were strangely white looking feet. They reminded me of the feet I once saw on a possum that showed up on our deck one night a few years ago. My first thought then was - this is the strangest looking raccoon I have ever seen! But the word "possum" popped into my head (maybe because of all those years that I read the Pogo cartoon strip in the newspaper)and when I looked on the internet I found my strange nocturnal visitor was a possum.
So, I figured a possum had been making it's home in my burlap bag. Then I looked down and saw - a tiny possum baby. I was really horrified. It was smaller than my thumb and could only totter around in tiny circles. What had a I done! What could I do? I am not fond of possums and would just as soon they stayed away from my yard, but I felt terrible about separating a mother and child, even of the rodent variety. I covered the bags and the tiny possum with the burlap, hoping the mother would come back and get it. At least the burlap would keep it out of the sight of predators for a while. I hoped.
I consulted the internet again and found out - I had forgotten - that possums are marsupials and carry the young (called joeys, like baby kangaroos), in their pouch. Also, the mothers regularly give birth to several more babies than they are physically equipped to nurse, so only the strongest survive. I figured, if the mothers can take such a cavalier attitude toward their own babies, I shouldn't get too upset about the one I saw.
About 5 days later, I went into the back tool shed, whence came the bag of burlap, to get a rake, and I heard a loud squeaking noise. I looked down and saw another possum baby, squeaking its tiny head off . It was also tottering around in circles, quite energetically, although its sense of balance was not quite all there and it fell over quite regularly. If it hadn't been so pathetic, it would have been funny.
Again, I was appalled, but I figured this one couldn't be my fault; it was moving around so strongly it couldn't have been separated from it's mother for that long - surely not for the 5 days since the previous baby possum sighting. But every time I had to go back into the shed for a tool, it would start squeaking and totter in my direction. I began to suspect it thought maybe I was its Mom. Horror of horrors! I finally closed up the shed, hoping the mother possum would retrieve it.
Next day, I peeked in the tool shed - no squeaking. I looked around and finally spotted the little creature at the back , lying still. Okay, it's dead. But then it started to weakly move around. It's alive but too weak to squeak. Great. I can't stand this anymore. I move it outside and leave it under some bushes, where I figure it will succumb quickly to the elements or some roving predator.
Some days I find it very difficult to deal with the life and death struggles of gardening.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Friday, September 3, 2010
Me and my rainbarrels
I first read about rainbarrels some time in the 90's in an issue of Canadian Gardening Magazine. That article sparked a memory of an old wooden barrel that one of my grandfathers had when I was quite young to collect rain. I decided to get one for myself.
The task proved to be somehat complicated. The article mentioned several sources, but some proved hard to contact. We found some at Humber Nurseries, but they were too big to transport in our car. And at that point, Lee Valley did have some, but they were actually a bit small. Finally, my sister who lives in London Ont. found a source and they had a van, so she and her husband transported one to us when they were coming to To. And later brought us a second one.
Thus began my experiments with rain barrels. I tried positioning them under several different downspouts to see how well they collected. This involved removing parts of the downspouts - I got out the hack-saw and hacked away. I soon discovered that most any style of rain barrel will colllect water from a downspout - the trick is how easy it is to get it out again. After about a year of use, my original rainbarrels began to leak at the point where the hose was installed to allow the water to be taken out. I tried various things to seal the point of leakage - good old duct tape, some special glue for marine applications, even had a regular tap installed in one - nothing helped in the long run.
About this time, the City began to offer rain barrels for sale and I got one. It proved to be better than the old ones, so I bought another and another until I had 4 all together. And their way of allowing you to access the water collected worked better. Also, the overflow system was more straightforward and allowed me to line them up so the first one, once full, could push its' extra water into the second one. And, I found that one downspout collected better than the rest, so I lined them all up against one wall. I would love to have an arrangement whereby the first sent its overflow into the second, the second into the 3rd , and the 3rd into the 4th. Unfortunately, I have worked out that to do this the first barrel has to be raised about 3 feet higher than it is! And that ain't gonna happen. So, what I have allows me to send overflow from the first barrel to any of the others; When it rains hard, I leave my umbrella and waterproof shoes by the back door and pop in and out to move the overflow hose to where it is needed.
I must confess that although I love collecting rainwater, the history of my relationship with my barrels has not been without difficult incidents. The wall where my barrels reside has a cellar window set in a window well. Several years ago, during a particularly heavy rainstorm, I went out and found the water was coming out of the downspout so quickly, it was leaping past the rain barrel opening and overflowing into the window well. In the cellar, I had a miniature Niagara Falls flowing down the inside of the wall at the point - fortunately, in an unfinished part of the basement. My husband and I had to bail out the window well in the pouring rain and then stopped the overflow by covering the well opening with an old outside table upside down on top of the well. That made us realize the window well needed a cover.
This summer, during another heavy downpour, I went out to check the barrels and found none of the water was going where it was supposed to, (i.e, into the first barrel) because the force of the water coming out the downspout was too strong and it was leaping about 2 feet out into the gravelled area past the barrels. So, I moved an empty garbage pail into position and it filled in about 3 minutes. Later, I found a flexible downspout extender at Rona and found I can use it to aim the water into one of the old original barrels Iwas no longer using. I plugged up the original holes inside for the out-take and over- flow with duct tape and it actually holds very well.
My husband likes using this old barrel because he dips a watering can from above into the water and its less fiddly then using the out take hose on the new barrels. Hence the old barrel's new name : "the big dipper".
So is all this worth it? I like the idea that we are using rainwater instead of treated city water for all of our containers and my vegetable garden. And I always save rainwater at the end of the summer in Tropicana oj containers to use on my orchids over the winter and my seedlings in the spring. In a summer such as this one, I have only put the hose on the garden twice. I have had enough rainwater to spot water any plants (mainly a few evergreens) that were planted in the spring and a few perennials that were moved.
I know plants don't like chlorinated water, and when you think of the cost just in energy of treating our water, eventually, we won't be able to afford to put it on our plants. So, I figure we're just getting our system worked out before it's really necessary.
And by the way, once you start doing this, it's amazing how you start to feel a sense of ownership about the rain that falls on your garden and how you want to collect it and use it as efficiently as possible. The other day, we had a short but very heavy downpour and as the water came out the downspout that carries the water from the upper level eavestrough to the lower, it shot out into the front yard several feet away from the house rather than landing in the lower trough, from where it would eventually go to the barrels. My husband noticed this and remarked to me: we've got to do something about that water shooting out the front down-spout - it should be going into the barrels.
Yeah, that's going to be tricky, I'll have to work on that!
The task proved to be somehat complicated. The article mentioned several sources, but some proved hard to contact. We found some at Humber Nurseries, but they were too big to transport in our car. And at that point, Lee Valley did have some, but they were actually a bit small. Finally, my sister who lives in London Ont. found a source and they had a van, so she and her husband transported one to us when they were coming to To. And later brought us a second one.
Thus began my experiments with rain barrels. I tried positioning them under several different downspouts to see how well they collected. This involved removing parts of the downspouts - I got out the hack-saw and hacked away. I soon discovered that most any style of rain barrel will colllect water from a downspout - the trick is how easy it is to get it out again. After about a year of use, my original rainbarrels began to leak at the point where the hose was installed to allow the water to be taken out. I tried various things to seal the point of leakage - good old duct tape, some special glue for marine applications, even had a regular tap installed in one - nothing helped in the long run.
About this time, the City began to offer rain barrels for sale and I got one. It proved to be better than the old ones, so I bought another and another until I had 4 all together. And their way of allowing you to access the water collected worked better. Also, the overflow system was more straightforward and allowed me to line them up so the first one, once full, could push its' extra water into the second one. And, I found that one downspout collected better than the rest, so I lined them all up against one wall. I would love to have an arrangement whereby the first sent its overflow into the second, the second into the 3rd , and the 3rd into the 4th. Unfortunately, I have worked out that to do this the first barrel has to be raised about 3 feet higher than it is! And that ain't gonna happen. So, what I have allows me to send overflow from the first barrel to any of the others; When it rains hard, I leave my umbrella and waterproof shoes by the back door and pop in and out to move the overflow hose to where it is needed.
I must confess that although I love collecting rainwater, the history of my relationship with my barrels has not been without difficult incidents. The wall where my barrels reside has a cellar window set in a window well. Several years ago, during a particularly heavy rainstorm, I went out and found the water was coming out of the downspout so quickly, it was leaping past the rain barrel opening and overflowing into the window well. In the cellar, I had a miniature Niagara Falls flowing down the inside of the wall at the point - fortunately, in an unfinished part of the basement. My husband and I had to bail out the window well in the pouring rain and then stopped the overflow by covering the well opening with an old outside table upside down on top of the well. That made us realize the window well needed a cover.
This summer, during another heavy downpour, I went out to check the barrels and found none of the water was going where it was supposed to, (i.e, into the first barrel) because the force of the water coming out the downspout was too strong and it was leaping about 2 feet out into the gravelled area past the barrels. So, I moved an empty garbage pail into position and it filled in about 3 minutes. Later, I found a flexible downspout extender at Rona and found I can use it to aim the water into one of the old original barrels Iwas no longer using. I plugged up the original holes inside for the out-take and over- flow with duct tape and it actually holds very well.
My husband likes using this old barrel because he dips a watering can from above into the water and its less fiddly then using the out take hose on the new barrels. Hence the old barrel's new name : "the big dipper".
So is all this worth it? I like the idea that we are using rainwater instead of treated city water for all of our containers and my vegetable garden. And I always save rainwater at the end of the summer in Tropicana oj containers to use on my orchids over the winter and my seedlings in the spring. In a summer such as this one, I have only put the hose on the garden twice. I have had enough rainwater to spot water any plants (mainly a few evergreens) that were planted in the spring and a few perennials that were moved.
I know plants don't like chlorinated water, and when you think of the cost just in energy of treating our water, eventually, we won't be able to afford to put it on our plants. So, I figure we're just getting our system worked out before it's really necessary.
And by the way, once you start doing this, it's amazing how you start to feel a sense of ownership about the rain that falls on your garden and how you want to collect it and use it as efficiently as possible. The other day, we had a short but very heavy downpour and as the water came out the downspout that carries the water from the upper level eavestrough to the lower, it shot out into the front yard several feet away from the house rather than landing in the lower trough, from where it would eventually go to the barrels. My husband noticed this and remarked to me: we've got to do something about that water shooting out the front down-spout - it should be going into the barrels.
Yeah, that's going to be tricky, I'll have to work on that!
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