A Perfect Day

Clouds overhead usually means smoke and wildfire -- the darker the gray, the closer the blaze.  So when I awoke this morning to gray skies, I half expected to hear the sound of Cal-Fire helicopters overhead.  But no -- it was actually raining.  RAINING!!!    All right; sort of raining.  I'll admit that in other parts of the world this gentle pattering of drops on the dust would be scarcely noticed.  Heck,  this event probably wouldn't even be considered rain.  But during a four-year drought in Copperopolis (in the month of July, no less!),  I'm calling it rain.   What a wonderful surprise!   I'm beside myself with delight and keep going outside to stand in it.  Loving the dampness of my bathrobe...

This is where we stand with our water situation.  Our well is very slow in replenishing due to the lower water table.  This means that we truck in our own water once a week to fill our water tank.  It takes about three trips to the water treatment facility to do this, but we are very grateful to have this resource available.  Frankly, I don't know what we'd do if we couldn't.

So we're becoming increasingly careful of the water that we use.  We now have four new red plastic buckets in the bathrooms that we use to conserve the water that would go down the drain while we wait for it to warm up.  When the bucket is full, I move it aside and shower.  Later, I cart the bucket outside and splash it on something in the garden that looks like it could use a drink.  I'm not sure that this is of much use in the great scheme of things, but I'm not going to stop doing what I can.

Tomorrow Bruce is taking a day-long workshop in the Bay Area on how to recycle gray water from the washing machine.  We'd like to eventually (hopefully soon) put in an underground cistern plumbed to our kitchen, laundry and bath.  With filtering, we'll be able to use this to water the gardens around the house.  Even without this dire drought, this seems like the logical way to go.









In the time it took to write this, the rain has died away.  But there is a cool breeze and dampness in the air and the birds are having a party in the trees.

A perfect summer day.