July is a strange month to be thinking about rain, but . . .
On July 18 and 19, Southern California received a whopper of a tropical storm, and our part of San Diego County got more rain than anywhere. Our yard took in 1.65 inches, but a few miles down the road 4.1 inches fell during those 48 hours, according to the National...
‘San Diego’ tomatoes, and supporting tomatoes
'San Diego' tomatoes I shouldn't be surprised, but the variety of tomato called 'San Diego' is thriving here in . . . San Diego. Why did I wait until this year to try it? Compared to the other varieties I've grown in this yard -- including Ace, Better Boy, Pineapple,...
The economics of my rain tank
Last winter was my first with a 530-gallon rain tank. I did not buy it because I thought it would save me a bunch of money on my water bill. I bought it because rain coming off my roof and running down the driveway irritated me. It seemed wasteful....
Green beans shade house
The front of our house faces east-northeast, so in the summer the sun rises to blast our windows. They need protection. We have interior drapes, but I've wondered if the house would stay cooler if we also had something outside to absorb the sunlight before it ever...
Reusing laundry water
This is Puleng, one of my former students in Lesotho. I learned to wash by hand from her and other students at Ngoana Jesu Secondary School, and I also learned from them to reuse my laundry water on my vegetable plots. I adopted that practice in Lesotho, and I've been...
What if we lived off rainfall alone?
Just out of curiousity, how far off is our current water usage from the amount of rain that falls on us? Our land is 1.32 acres, and the average rainfall here is 16 inches. This means that an average of 573,150 gallons of rain fall on the land each year. Our roof...
Rain is not sewage
Yesterday, we got an unusually strong storm for mid-May. My yard received 0.7 inches; but the San Diego Airport got 1.84 inches! For San Diego, that's the wettest day in May ever, according to the National Weather Service. For the whole Southern California...
Saving water by applying urine as fertilizer
I balked at the idea of urinating into a toilet bowl of fresh, drinkable water when I first returned from Lesotho. Not that I'd forgotten that was the norm in America. I'd done it my whole life until moving to Lesotho. But as the G.K. Chesterton quote goes, "The whole...


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