Rewilding My Lot

We’re more than a month into a major drought here, so who knows when there will next be any rain. It’s certainly not in the immediate forecast.

Nevertheless, I have optimistically placed a second rain barrel behind the house. (To see more information about the equipment I am using, see this previous post: Rain Barrels.)

The situation in this location is more complex than with the first barrel on the other side of the patio. Here there is a significant slope down to the border fence, just to the right of this photo. In my early days here, I quickly encountered two problems with this. One was that precious rain water was simply pouring off the property and ultimately into the street in front of the house. In addition, one particular deluge washed away native grass seeds that I had planted just six days before that (a story for another day).

This set-up is very likely to be adjusted in the next year or so, after I have studied how water moves here with the new barrel in place, and after more plants are in the ground.

The black sandbag-type objects are pieces of sod that I pulled up from the area where the rain barrel is and rolled into trash bags. I installed them several weeks ago, just after the seed erosion incident, and I have called them “sod sausages”. This is obviously not a good permanent solution, but it will have to do for now.