It's ungrateful not to be glad for the inch and a half or so of rain we've already received, but... we're glad to have an evening wave of thunderstorms and heavy downpours add to the total.
We came out of drought conditions officially last January after years of significant, if not severe drought, but went back into incipient drought (according to our state climatologist) in mid-summer, I think.
October is normally a dry month, and in a newspaper article today, she (our state climatologist) is predicting a dry fall and winter because of La Nina effects. So anything helps at this point.
I'm beginning to think about focusing more sharply in my educational gardening programs towards sustainable gardening. I've already been doing that, but really, we don't have any justification as gardeners to use landscape plants that need more water than we've ever normally received in rainfall. And in a time of a changing climate, it's best to be more conservative than ever in how much 'life support' our garden plants need. I don't see how we can justify watering lawns and landscape plants, when folks downstream need water for drinking and other essential uses.
Sure, our vegetables are water and nutrient-hogs, but that's to be expected. We've bred them for productivity, not for their thrifty character.
But we can go a long way with mulch, soil conservation techniques, and conservation of rainwater and gray water.
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