I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
And so the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're goin' through

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Between the rain drops.

Some people wanted to see the rain barrel all together, so here it is (I still haven't had the opportunity to do the drainage project on the older rain barrel). You can see the extra row of bricks, and the dirt backfilled to mostly up the cinder brick base. Also you can see the diverter connected. For this to work right, the black flex-pipe opening needs to be level. With all the rain last week the barrel is full (57 gallons) and the diverter seemed to work correctly. Still more to do there. But I need to wait for when it's a little drier and can empty out the old barrel.

Here is what I did today.It looks like a hole in the ground because that's exactly what it is. This is my rock garden, the construction crap our wonderful developer left for us and claimed they were "landscaping rocks" (which the top layer was, somewhat). Over the past eight years I've eliminated some of it, clearing off the top layer of rocks and leveling out the ground. This year I'm determined to finish it off. Today the sister-in-law came up and she likes to get involved with stuff. We worked on it together. You can see we crossed the halfway mark. We did about as much today as I did on working on it four or five other times this year. I may actually get this done this year.

2 comments:

vince said...

My landlord (who is also one of my best friends) did a rain barrel setup with two barrels for his garden in the back of the building this year. It works pretty well, although he's still tweaking it.

Love the "rock garden." :-)

Steve Buchheit said...

Vince, yeah, it's the tweaking part that is the funness. I like the system on the new rain barrel. It's a lot less "hands on" and the barrel (at least so far) is working great.

Yeah, the rock garden is about all I can describe it as. either that or weed bed. The rocks were enough of a problem that I couldn't mow it without wrecking my blade, so we had a lot of wild carrots (queen ann's lace), dog bane, bee balm, milk thistle, canadian thistle (which I had to pull), wild strawberry, and a few other things. It's all gone now. My back is killing me.