Water

My neighbour, who is the Chairman of our HOA (Homeowners Association) Architectural Control Committee, (more of which in a later post) recently gently enquired of me whether or not I had managed to get my sprinkler system working yet. She had noticed that my lawn was a little brown. A can of worms if there ever was one.

We have a sprinkler system for the garden, and the controls are complicated and digital and I just hadn't had the willpower yet to sit down with the instruction booklet and decide how long, for what days, in what zones, and how many times a day, I wanted to programme the sprinklers to work - QUITE apart from the fact that, having been well and truly indoctrinated by the English to believe that watering a lawn was a sin, accustomed to a brown lawn in summer anyway, and accompanied by my own beliefs that it is a terrible waste of treated water, well, you can see the dilemma. Plus, we've had lots and lots and lots of rain this June, so who needs sprinklers yet?

I'm trying to explain a little of the above to this neighbour, who I suspect might be related to Martha Stewart, so fastidious and accomplished she seems, and she volunteers to 'help' me work the system out. So one Saturday recently, she comes over and we figure out how to run a test programme just to see if the sprinkler heads are all working, and which zones are which. I thank her and subsequently, of course, am obliged to sit down with the instruction booklet and give myself a headache over all my watering options and how to programme the controls. I finally figure it out, and currently water four of my 12 watering zones, for half an hour every forth day, starting at 3:00am and finishing at 5:00am thus providing most of the garden with one inch of water each week, which is the recommended amount (told you it was complicated). I still can't shake the feeling that it is a waste of water to be doing all of this though.

I was horrified to learn, during earlier visits here, that it is illegal to collect rainwater in Colorado. No water butts allowed. Preposterous! Just who says that I cannot collect God's own rainwater? Who thinks they own it? I discover that the legislation stems from water rights which were worked out years ago when Colorado was just being colonised. Farmer's had to fight for water for their crops, and there is much history over what amounts from what rivers go where. (Andrew thinks that we could probably legally collect it by claiming that our water butts are simply very, very large rain gauges.)

When we got our first water bills for this house, I was puzzled to see that we were always charged for 3000 gallons - exactly. I was pretty sure that our water was metered, and know that we couldn't be using 3000 gallons exactly each month. Finally I phoned the city to ask about it, and it turns out that they only bill in 1000 gallon increments! Use 2999 gallons and get billed for 2000 gallons. Use 4001 gallons and get billed for 4000 gallons. Not exactly an incentive to conserve water is it? Then I realise that the charge for 1000 gallons of water is the princely sum of $1.55! That's about a pound sterling for one thousand gallons of treated water! Suddenly, collecting rainwater seems a bit pointless in some ways, and I'm not surprised that no one in this reputedly 'green' area of Northern Colorado has ever bothered to challenge the legislation.

Still, I suffer internal conflict about the whole watering business. I have managed this summer to plant just a very small area of lettuce and herbs, some strawberries, some beans, tomatoes, and squash, and am happy to water them regularly. There are also some ornamental areas of with day lilies, some roses, kniphofia, hardy geraniums, and oenothera. I try to remember that this, as mentioned in an earlier post, is an alpine desert, and that, with an average annual rainfall of just 13 inches, not much will survive without being watered. We are exhorted to ensure that we water trees and shrubs in the winter because there is so little precipitation - I ignored this advice, and have a lot of brown juniper dieback as a result. Moreover this culture is different, and I will have to somehow merge my own beliefs with local customs. Maybe part of it is that a sprinkler system just doesn't gel with my puritanical leanings. It seems so indulgent to have this all automated (so automated that you can incorporate delays for rain - so what am I on about?)

On top of all this, I have discovered that the water is flouridated! AAAaaarrrrrruuuuuggggghhhhhhh.......

Water. Glad to be here? Sad to be here? Unresolved.