Well, I was Mrs. Green Jeans (for those of you old enough to remember that Mr. Green Jeans was a farmer and Captain Kangaroo's right hand man) for most of the weekend. With the 100+ temps, if you have any outdoor trees, grass, garden or flowers, they need A LOT of attention right about now. It seems I watered off and on all day on Saturday. Then Sunday, I tended to the garden, watered a few more spots and then Gary and I shopped for gutters for the back of the house and started to work on them a bit (no, he really isn't able to do the work, but he wants to try, so I'll help him as long as he can work at it).
We saw some rain barrels at the Farmers Market a couple of weeks ago and we have talked about setting up barrels to catch the rain off our roof, for some time now. Gary needs "projects"
, so we bought rain barrels. Here is a link to see them. The pictures all show two barrels together, but we only have one barrel in 3 locations.
http://austingreenwater.com/rain-bar...om-green-water
They are nice as they are elevated on the wood platforms and the valve where you hook up the hose is at the bottom of the barrel, so the water will drain out through the hose via gravity. You can use a soaker hose also.
We can get a rebate from the City of Austin to pay for about 25% of each barrel. We have one in the front (or side of the house - it's hidden behind our crepe myrtle bushes) to water our white oak tree and crepe myrtles in the front yard. We'll put two in the back yard, one at one end of the house for the red oak and one at the other end of the house for the chinquapin oak and the garden.
We've needed to put up gutters in the back of the house for several years, but just haven't done it. We have friends who will help us if we can't get them done. We already have gutters in the front of the house, so we just have to adjust the downspout to empty into the barrel.
We are also having an arborist come tomorrow to trim our trees. We have a 3 1/2 year old white oak (Montery oak) in the front yard that needs the lower branches trimmed off. Then we have a red oak in the back yard that is rubbing the roof in places. Hopefully, tomorrow they will look all prettied up when I get home!