It’s getting closer to the season when we will see less rain and more sunshine, a most welcome development — until things start to dry up. The moss in the forest is thick and soft now; in a few weeks, it will be crunchy.
We lived for several years in the Mojave Desert in Nevada, where we had to adapt landscaping to the climate and carefully dole out water to the plants in the yard. Then we moved to Vancouver Island, where we have to adapt landscaping to the climate and carefully dole out water to the plants in the yard.
Admittedly, the average annual rainfall here, about 665 millimetres, is a lot more than in our previous place of residence. There, the annual rainfall was about 140 millimetres, and 20 per cent of the entire year’s allotment could easily fall during a violent thunderstorm in a matter of minutes, turning washes and drainage channels into rivers capable of sweeping cars away. That water would have been more useful spread out over the year.
That same thought was on my mind as steady rainfall last week turned our driveway into a small river — if we could just spread the rainfall out a little more evenly, or perhaps find a way to save some of the winter rain for the dry summer.
Without building a Site C-sized dam in our yard, of course.
We’ve been looking at rainfall-capture systems, but it would require something more than a few rain barrels at the end of the drainpipes. Being able to provide more water for more vegetables and to the fruit trees planted by previous owners would help us become more self-sufficient, but building the catchment system I envision would set us back thousands of dollars.
It costs a lot to live on nothing.
And we have to be careful when we set out to alter nature. We visited Egypt a few weeks ago, where we were constantly amazed by the quantity and quality of produce that was available in Cairo. It seldom rains there, but the Nile provides a steady supply of irrigation water, making it possible to grow almost anything.
Flying from Cairo to Aswan makes it easy to see what a difference water makes. The green ribbon of the Nile Valley stands out from the austere beige of the desert that covers the rest of the country.
But it comes at a price. The building of the Aswan Dam in the 1960s was a good news-bad news situation. It put a stop to the seasonal flooding of the Nile, sparing Egyptians the destruction of being flooded out and enabling year-round farming, but that flooding also brought a load of rich silt to replenish the land naturally. Now, Egyptian farmers depend on chemical fertilizers, and natural systems have been disrupted.
As we walked around the Cairo suburb where our son and his family live, we marvelled at the variety of trees and shrubs that can grow there, but we also noticed how dusty everything is without regular precipitation to clean things up.
It was good to come home to a place where a gentle rain keeps the greenery fresh.
And when it gets dry, the natural vegetation reacts accordingly. The spring flowers go to seed, and the arbutus trees, Garry oaks and Douglas firs adjust to the changing season. The summer flowers, with deeper roots or other means to cope, put up their cheerful blossoms.
Because we depend on water from a deep well, and we’re not sure of its capacity, we have to be careful in the summer, forgoing a green lawn and applying water only where needed to keep things alive.
The best solution, of course, is to take our cues from the forest, and not try to grow a lush jungle where one shouldn’t grow.
The eco-systems around our house have adapted to the climate, and so should we.
