Water For Free

Front yard with Water Barrel

I think it's really interesting to try to make a system work. You think of the big goals, you get down into the smallest details, you determine what your resources are, and then you put things in place that make it work. The things you put in place, the systems, are as fascinating to me as the final product. I find making things work really satisfying, especially when the series of systems are all pulling together. 

Big Goal Number One: 

No More Money to the Sewerage and Water Board.  

I hate to be snarky, but the S&WB charged me $440 for water usage post-Katrina from August 2005 to December 2006 when *no one* lived in this house. And when I called them to inquire about it, a very polite lady answered the phone and let me know that all their systems had been down for six months and that she would take a message so someone could call me when they were back on-line. This was in February. Finally, after they shut the water off in March, I just flipping paid the thing so they'd turn the water on for a friend who'd moved in. 

Also Big Goal Number One: 

Conserve Water

Louisiana summers can be brutally hot. It rains almost every day (in a torrential downpour that usually lasts 30 minutes but, if you think you can make a dash to the car in 30 seconds without getting drenched, you're fooling yourself.) It's intense, driving rain, and though it usually relieves the heavy humidity, it's not quite enough to keep your garden alive all through the summer. I usually water early in the morning every day in the summer, and sometimes again at night. After just two days of no rain, your entire garden can dry up so it's a good idea to be vigilant. 

Which brings me to the Sewerage and Water Board. My water bills in the summer were cruising up to $120 a month. Okay, that includes my tenant's apartment too, but excessive either way. And since all this great water fell on my yard FOR FREE every day, I thought, why not try to save some of it. 

Large open containers attracted mosquitos (and those guys don't need any help driving you crazy), and rain chains only watered a couple of small pots and plots. I'd heard about rain barrels but I thought I didn't stand a chance at installing one with my tiny alleyway, unreachable gutter downspouts, and complete lack of access to 50 gallon barrels. After months of calling around to plastics stores and feed wherehouses, a friend who owns an organic nursery got several plastic barrels to make into rain barrels to sell. 

I could have bought his expertly crafted barrels (made with a custom-welded spout and tightly sealed closures) but instead I bought the barrels plain and hauled them home to drill and seal myself. The end result was, yes, a tad bit leaky, but oh-so-worth it!  

My first rain barrel, not quite securely raised on concrete blocks and uneven pavement

Front yard barrel with drip irrigation system for potted flowers

I learned how to make a rain barrel here and bought a down-spout attachment here. It turns out the downspout adapter is only great for gutters that measure 2x3 and in New Orleans most of the gutters are 3x5. The downspout attachment fits inside my gutter, but it should really attach on the outside to catch all the water possible. So my rain barrels aren't that efficient yet--at some point I'll figure out an adapter piggy back to solve the problem. A 2000 square foot roof like mine should yield 1000 gallons of water every inch of rain. My roof has four gutters, two of which are now rain barreled. Though I'm not harvesting nearly all the water I could, in a hard rain, both 50 gallon barrels fill up, which is 100 gallons more water than I used to have every time it rains. 

Backyard barrel with hose hooked up to downspout

Downspout...slightly flawed

 

The Backyard

I love my backyard. Bordered by the yards of my neighbors and totally canopied by trees, the yard is an oasis, an escape, a completely green sanctuary in the middle of the city. I fell in love with it the moment I saw it. Well... I guess you could say I fell in love with its potential.

Backyard, circa 2003

First of all, it was covered in concrete. I convinced one of my high school students to come help me jackhammer about 1000 square feet of concrete in one weekend--my first ever experience with power tools and the beginning of a beautiful adventure in tearing out, fixing up, re-envisioning, and re-building...both my backyard and my life. 

When we learned that a wheelbarrow wouldn't fit down the tiny alley, I realized I was either going to hand-walk each piece of concrete out or I was going to make it all work together. In the process of re-working the yard I discovered I  wasn't the first resident to make a compromise between ease of exit and "making it work." 

Hidden in the dirt I found: 

• two wrenches

• the concrete foundation from an outhouse

• six glass bottles from the 1930's

• a porcelain doll's head

• a pile of leaded glass, buried two feet down

• chicken bones

• an entire fireplace mantelpiece

• metal grating from an old outdoor stove

• a child's bicycle

A soil test came up super-positive for lead and other crazy metals. With no easy exit, everything that had ever *been* in the backyard, must have *stayed* in the backyard. I decided to embrace it. 

The busted up concrete became the border for the raised beds along the fence line. I tore down a fence that separated the tenant's side so I could share the whole backyard with my neighbor. I made that fence into a planter for tomatoes, greens, peppers, and herbs. When my neighbor's tree fell on my yard,  I had it chainsawed and piled up the wood for burning in the fire pit. I ripped up a diseased blood orange tree, planted a willow tree in its place, and then ripped up the willow when it took over the yard. 

I had finally worked and re-worked the yard to exactly what I wanted. I'd moved every square foot of dirt to another place in the yard, planted raised beds of banana trees and sweet olive, bought teak lawn furniture, grown organic vegetables, and enjoyed the tin-roofed overhang out back (especially during a rain). 

Then Katrina hit, and the backyard was destroyed. An enormous tree from my back neighbor missed my house by 10 feet and collapsed the back overhang, another neighbor's fence was re-distributed over my entire yard, and everything that had been alive in the yard died from the standing water and excessive heat. I was gone from the house from August of 2005 to January of 2007, and in that time the wilderness had reclaimed the yard, which resembled some kind of jungle scene from Apocalypse Now.

I worked on the place for another year, getting the new trees taken down, moving more dirt, re-building fences, and re-planting new vegetables for the garden. And while I got the yard back to where it wanted to be, I found myself living there more than half the time. I did yoga in the mornings among the vegetables, ate dinner under the tin roof. Crawfish boils and late night bonfires dominated the spring. A hammock. A new grill and smoker. Tiki torches to light up the evening. 

I found myself thinking of the backyard as another living room, and then I began finding  ways to bring my life more in balance with what I felt when I was out there.