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April 28, 2022
Splish, Splash
By Mikie Baker
The Bandera Prophet
When the pandemic made me move in with My Future Husband, this gardener had no idea I was moving to West Texas. I thought it was still the Hill Country out here, but alas, we don’t get enough rain to keep a good crop of squash and zucchini alive. And why is that you ask? Well, listen up because I’m about to explain all things about cool, clean water.
City folk assume that you hook up your hose to the faucet, turn it on, and poof, water! In fact, when I moved to the Hill Country, my first question to VBF was, “What’s an aquifer?” She laughed and said, “It’s where we get our water, silly!” I told her in the Big City, we got our water from the wastewater treatment plant.
If only it could be that easy in the country. Out here, if you don’t have a very small water system for the town, you drill a hole in the ground to find water. And most of what you find is water filled with caliche rock which not only tastes bad, it clogs up and slowly kills your ice maker, dishwasher and shower head. Unless, of course, you get a filtration system but that’s another story.
But My Future Husband is all about being a good steward to the land, recycling and rainwater catchment. That’s where you catch and use all the rain that falls out of the sky. It’s always been this gardener’s dream to have rainwater catchment because it’s so good for the plants and appliances. I think I might have just batted my eyelashes extra hard when MFH told me he was on rainwater catchment.
Little did I know it would be a nightmare.
He collects 17,500 gallons of water in a series of tanks with levers and hoses that would probably warrant at least three YouTube videos on how to run. It’s way above my less-than-adequate left brain to understand. I’m a lowly writer, not an engineer egghead.
It all sounds good in theory, but the first time he uttered those divorceable words, “We might not have enough water to water all your plants on the porch so they could possibly die,” I should have left right then and there. Nobody kills my precious plants except me.
There was one year that I got the great idea to buy a used 3,000-gallon swimming pool for $50. The only reason My Future Husband let me get it was he thought it would be a great way to collect another 3,000 gallons of water without having to buy a new water tank. We only swam in the pool a couple of times because once he figured out that the sun makes the water evaporate, he pumped every last gallon back into one of the tanks. So much for being a bathing beauty.
Now here comes the West Texas part. We’ve all been experiencing a very scary drought. I’ve managed to keep my porch plants alive, but the garden is down to a few precious plants. Last week when the lying weathermen proclaimed, “We’re going to get over an inch of rain!” I yelled HOORAY and discussed it with all my plants.
Know what happened? We never got a drop. I screamed at my weather radar demanding that the rain shouldn’t go around us and, evidently, the radar can’t hear. We are as dry here as old women and West Texas get.
I don’t believe you can pray rain into existence, so I don’t need your prayers. I just need you to drop by with all the gallon jugs of water that will fit in your car. Oh, and a bottle of wine, of course! I’m tired of being a drip.
City folk assume that you hook up your hose to the faucet, turn it on, and poof, water! In fact, when I moved to the Hill Country, my first question to VBF was, “What’s an aquifer?” She laughed and said, “It’s where we get our water, silly!” I told her in the Big City, we got our water from the wastewater treatment plant.
If only it could be that easy in the country. Out here, if you don’t have a very small water system for the town, you drill a hole in the ground to find water. And most of what you find is water filled with caliche rock which not only tastes bad, it clogs up and slowly kills your ice maker, dishwasher and shower head. Unless, of course, you get a filtration system but that’s another story.
But My Future Husband is all about being a good steward to the land, recycling and rainwater catchment. That’s where you catch and use all the rain that falls out of the sky. It’s always been this gardener’s dream to have rainwater catchment because it’s so good for the plants and appliances. I think I might have just batted my eyelashes extra hard when MFH told me he was on rainwater catchment.
Little did I know it would be a nightmare.
He collects 17,500 gallons of water in a series of tanks with levers and hoses that would probably warrant at least three YouTube videos on how to run. It’s way above my less-than-adequate left brain to understand. I’m a lowly writer, not an engineer egghead.
It all sounds good in theory, but the first time he uttered those divorceable words, “We might not have enough water to water all your plants on the porch so they could possibly die,” I should have left right then and there. Nobody kills my precious plants except me.
There was one year that I got the great idea to buy a used 3,000-gallon swimming pool for $50. The only reason My Future Husband let me get it was he thought it would be a great way to collect another 3,000 gallons of water without having to buy a new water tank. We only swam in the pool a couple of times because once he figured out that the sun makes the water evaporate, he pumped every last gallon back into one of the tanks. So much for being a bathing beauty.
Now here comes the West Texas part. We’ve all been experiencing a very scary drought. I’ve managed to keep my porch plants alive, but the garden is down to a few precious plants. Last week when the lying weathermen proclaimed, “We’re going to get over an inch of rain!” I yelled HOORAY and discussed it with all my plants.
Know what happened? We never got a drop. I screamed at my weather radar demanding that the rain shouldn’t go around us and, evidently, the radar can’t hear. We are as dry here as old women and West Texas get.
I don’t believe you can pray rain into existence, so I don’t need your prayers. I just need you to drop by with all the gallon jugs of water that will fit in your car. Oh, and a bottle of wine, of course! I’m tired of being a drip.