This morning I awoke to the sound of rain. It’s the most pleasant sound, a muffled pecking on the roof. This is the first storm in a series of four that the National Weather Service says will give us three to six inches by Tuesday, an event with more potential to flood than anything we’ve seen since 2010, before the drought started. (Will this be the first year since then that we have above average rainfall too?)
I am possessive of my rain. See, I just did it — “my” rain. If I’m home while it’s coming down, then I’m outside running around checking levels on the tanks, adjusting hoses, observing the mulched basins I’ve built, getting soaked. My goal is that every raindrop sinks into the soil on my property — that not a single drop runs off my property.
I’m not there yet. I still lose some from the driveway, whose curb I need to make more cuts in. But elsewhere I capture it all. I refuse to treat rain like sewage.
How can we lament the drought and demand watering restrictions only to discard rain into the streets?
Recently, I cut a downspout pipe that channeled rain from one section of my roof directly to the street. It used to be that the rainwater gushed out of that pipe and eroded the soil at the edge of my yard and then carved a gully out of our dirt road and then flowed downhill to add to our neighbors’ flooding problems. So I unearthed that pipe and chopped it.
For one, that rain is mine. I’m going to keep it. For two, that erosion and flooding is my fault and I need to knock it off.
When my wife and I were looking for a house to buy we dreamed of having a yard large enough that would allow me to grow much of our food, and we also dreamed of having a creek running through the property. But creeks are extremely rare in Southern California, and alas we moved into this house and left our dreams of a creek behind.
Below our house the yard slopes down at about 5 degrees. One day after chopping the downspout pipe, I put our two sons in a wagon and told them we needed to collect rocks to make a river bed. Cass liked the idea of “making a river.” The boys and I tossed rocks into the wagon and then I towed them back to the place where I’d chopped off the downspout pipe. At the opening of the pipe they eagerly helped me lay a path of rocks — some yard work is meant for young boys, and carrying and tossing rocks is one of them.
“We made a river!” I said.
Well, we had made a bed for a tiny creek. Cass didn’t call me out on it.
Our creek is very short and it is not perennial; it only runs during a rain. But an ephemeral creek is better than none, and it’s better than erosion, and it’s better than flooding our neighbors, and it helps sink “our” rain into our yard. Better yet, it sinks the rainwater between some of our fruit trees, and I imagine the trees’ roots will eventually tap our creek’s flow.
Our creek is flowing this morning. And it looks like it will continue for the next week straight. Rain is making our little dream come true.
My yard and fruit trees are LOVING all the rain! And me, too!