Rainwater capture and climate change

Hello Everyone,

Hope you are well.  If you are in the Southwestern Ontario area that's had so much rain lately ... I hope you are also dry!  I haven't checked the Environment Canada tally but we must have had two bouts of rain over the last two weeks that that had over 5cm of rain each time.

I actually went out and purchased two new garbage cans to store rainwater in!  Couldn't afford proper rain barrels or hose attachments, but I bucketed water from the one catch-barrel into the others and now have three on the porch.  The two proper rainbarrels at the side of the house were already full from the previous rain, as was a container by the back door, one by the vegetable garden, and every small buckets and watering can around the place.

And it rained a bit this evening!  Just to get a last measure in for June.

So a June with an overabundance of rain follows May with really no rain.

The interior of British Columbia is having a heat wave.  The Canadian Prairies are having drought.  And who knows if Ontario here will get rain for the rest of the summer!?

Welcome to climate change and weather anomalies. 

I wonder if anyone has yet put together the garden workshop series on Gardening for Climate Change, or a book of that title. 

A further odd thing is that we have all the things we did not plant specifically growing huge around the gardens.  Things like peppers, tomatoes, beets, and basil - things we planted - are growing slowly. 

I don't really know what it means ... perhaps just to be happy for the herbs we've got in abundance.  More catnip this year than I've ever seen.  Taller day lilies and coffee chicory.

Lots of flowers.

I'll take that.

Best regards to all!

Why's Woman

The power of knitting - and Happy Birthday Stephanie

Hello everyone,

I've been busy gardening for many people ... and sometimes for myself and family.  And struggling to find time to ... time to do something that I haven't even been sure of what I wanted it to be.

And then I read Stephanie Pearl McPhee's Yarn Harlot blog post for today.  It's her birthday, and altho' she doesn't usually work on her birthday, today she's been working - teaching workshops to creative people who gathered to share ideas and be inspired - and discovered that this work day is really a good birthday because she has been doing things she loves.  As she said:

"Yeah, I'm going to work a 12 hour day on my birthday ... but ... I'm so lucky that this is my work.  I'll be surrounded by people who have set aside a whole weekend to learn to make things, and celebrate being someone who makes things, and the whole day we'll talk about knitting, and how it works and every person here, every one of them, thinks that's not stupid."

The parts I really like in that quotation are "celebrate being someone who makes things" and "every person here ... thinks that's not stupid"

The celebration of herself is something beyond the "do what you love" idea from the '90s ... and I think it takes it several big steps forward.

It involves loving the act - the art/craft of knitting in Stephanie's case - and it involves a recognition and celebration of her good self.  And the shared joy in the activity bolsters the community.

I'm just thinking quietly to myself that I am a gardener.  I make gardens.  I am able to help other people make gardens.  That's good.  And I like it.  And I like myself for that.

Well, isn't that something!

Happy Birthday Stephanie!  Thanks for working on your birthday and touching me, as well as all the people who are in your workshop.

Best regards to all of you!

Wise Woman