By Andrew Haupt
Today I went out to check the rain tank and discovered the replacement clean out valve was leaking in the same spot as the original. Tried to tighten it with a pipe wrench and the whole thing snapped off. Extremely frustrating — I need to get this fixed in the next week as we’re supposed to get more rain and snow on Tuesday.
Continued clearing in the Manzanita grove and over by the big oak’s downed limb. That latter area is thick with brush, and the oak is much more difficult to clean up, since it has a lot more flexible and leafy offshoots.
A lightbulb went off as we were stacking brush in part of the meadow, while I was thinking about the book I’m reading now (Gardening When It Counts by Steve Solomon) as well as the Farming show with Monty Don. It feels like we’re playing at gardening a bit with our garden beds behind the house, and the small slope I intend to terrace. None of it is terribly efficient. While I look with envy at the beautiful flat fields they feature in the Monty Don show, I realized we do have one flat field, and we aren’t using it. There’s a section of the meadow around 2000 square feet with pretty nice soil that’s idle. The limiting factor here is water, but I don’t think it would be too difficult to lay a line down the hill. I’m now motivated to get this up and going for Spring — it should be a higher priority than terracing the hill.
Some type of checkerbloom is growing all over the meadow area — I’m not sure what this indicates about the soil there, but it’s worth investigating.