There has been another fire in Horseshoe Canyon this month (the Warren fire), which has brought lots of firefighters and jets doing retardant drops. While it’s been windy, there have been enough breaks for the planes to get in, which has helped a lot. At this point, the fire is about 50% contained, and they are starting to reallocate resources.

Other than that, it’s been a pleasant spring here, cooler than usual. We’ve had lots of beautiful birds and have seen three gila monsters, including a mating pair.

The garden is doing well. I’ve been focusing on our soil and have begun doing some in-bed composting in the beds I am resting. It seems to be working well. 

We are also beginning a project I have wanted to do for some time — rain water harvesting. I have talked to people who harvest rain water for all their water needs (washing, drinking, garden, etc.) even with rainfall as low as ours. (We get about 15-20 inches a year, though that varies considerably.) The trick is to have a very big tank. There are calculators for the tank size you need based on average rainfall, peak rainfall in volume per unit of time, and collection area.

To date, we’ve just done very small collection with buckets under the roofline. We’re going to expand this gradually, starting with new gutters and a small-ish thousand or so gallon used tank that we were given. Then after we get this installed and working, we can add things like a larger tank and possibly plumbing and a pump out to the garden. 

The last year and a half has made me reflect more on our impact on the environment. I like this approach to projects, starting small with recycled materials and then scaling up as appropriate.