Wednesday, September 21, 2022

The garden isn't always pretty

I admit that I tend to develop a negative outlook on my garden as summer oh so slowly winds down.  Our long dry spell, which usually starts in April and stretches into late October or November, feels interminable.  Mid-day heat becomes tiresome and I long for cooler nighttime temperatures.  The soil is dry, plants look tired (if not dead), and flowers are sparser.  We've been lucky not to have any fires close by this year but our gusty Santa Ana winds are picking up so the risk of wildfires will intensify until our rainy season arrives.

Early morning is the best time of day, partly because shadows hide the less attractive features of the garden.

Last week I featured sunset photos in a post.  These photos of yesterday's sunrise are brought to your courtesy of my cat, Pipig, who was screeching at us while we were still in bed, apparently due to an unexpected sense of urgency about getting her litter box cleaned.

This photo captured a group of clouds in the northeast.  The hedge needs trimming but I put a hold on all heavy pruning until the outdoor watering ban ended, not wanting to stress plants any further than they already were.

Our temporary outdoor watering ban, required to prevent excessive demands on the water system while the Metropolitan Water District repaired 36 miles of pipeline, was lifted at the start of this week, two days early.  As we're still subject to water restrictions that define the days on which we can run our irrigation system, today was the first day we could do that.  However, my preoccupation with water use continues as our meter shows a slow leak.  While not able to pinpoint the leak's precise location without employing a contractor with acoustic leak detection tools, we were able to isolate the problem to a particular section of pipe connected directly to the city's water line.  We've had two prior pin-hole leaks in the same section of pipe within the past year so we contacted a plumber to replace the entire line from the street to the point it connects to the house.  While the plumber was able to suggest a method to limit the impact to my garden somewhat, there's a lot of prep work to be done.

The pipe in question runs under my compost bins so I started by emptying the one I was currently using.

I stopped adding new material to my compost pile when we decided to bite the bullet and replace the pipe.  It was about half full when I started sifting through it to remove rocks, grubs and the giant bird-of-paradise roots infiltrating the bin from my neighbor's property.  The photos show the bin actively in use (left, midway through the process), the screen I used to sift it (middle), and the empty bin (right).

Even though the bin wasn't full at the start, I managed to fill one and a half trashcans with screened compost

I used it up all too fast on this and one other, smaller area in the back garden

My stubborn husband, who is recovering from surgery and still isn't supposed to be lifting much weight, started tackling removal of a large area of gravel.

This is a fraction of the areas he's already cleared of gravel.  I'd estimate he's about half done.

So far, he's filled 16 bags with gravel.  Regrettably, more than half of them are being stored in my cutting garden.

I still have to dig up a section of bromeliads and succulents I planted along our northern property line.

In addition to the succulents and bromeliads I'll need to put into temporary pots, there's a chiminea, a couple of large pots, and rocks that I'll need to move (somewhere)
 
Among the plants to be moved are those in this lovely little vignette I showed off in an August post

We've received the cost estimate for performing the plumbing work but we don't yet have a scheduled date for the three-day job.  Hopefully, it won't be long.  Whatever water we saved by honoring the 13-day outdoor watering ban is being lost every day that the work's on hold.


All material © 2012-2022 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party

14 comments:

  1. Gosh, plumbing issue are such a nasty business and a headache. But as you already had two prior pin-hole leaks, this is probably the best course of action to have a peace of mind from not on. Too bad it involves so much prep work (your sifted compost looks glorious!).
    I hope that despite your husband's stubbornness, he knows his own body well enough not to over do it.
    chavli

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    1. The compost turned out really well! I'd been fairly selective about what I added to the bin but other than the rocks, disgusting grubs and my neighbor's invading roots, there was very little waste. I only wish I'd had more.

      My husband's a very smart guy but, we've been together since we were college freshman, and he does push things.

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  2. Damn, I am sorry! Do I understand right, that this is not an irrigation pipe issue but a regular water pipe issue? So much to know and act on as a homeowner! We have scaffolding up on the south side of our house as Andrew is replacing some siding (too small of a job for a contractor to want to take on), he's ran into issue after issue that he's had to problem solve. I hope your garden damage is minimal with this project!

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    1. I hope Andrew's project goes smoothly from here on out, Loree! It does seem that every repair (or "improvement") raises more issues.

      The central pipe connected to our city's water system feeds both the irrigation system and water to the house so, without it, we're up the creek so to speak. However, we're not replacing pipe throughout the property as there's been no evidence of leaks in any of the water lines that serve other parts of the property. The section to be replaced is something in excess of 100 feet of copper pipe. The replacement pipe has to be copper because that's what was used inside the house. We think the irrigation pipe throughout the rest of the property is PVC or some other kind of plastic piping, less likely to degrade over time, which is good as that's 4 or more times the number of feet we're replacing this round.

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  3. Another pin hole leak--arggghh! Sorry to hear that. I hope The Stubborn One is okay all that gravel moving. Not easy.

    Beautiful compost, and so much kept out of a landfill--that is truly "green". :)

    Hope your plumbing project is a great success and that you do not get more of this issue.

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    1. My husband thinks we should install a leak detection system in the attic so that may be a tag-on project. There's less wear and tear on the pipes inside the house because it carries a fraction of the water carried by the external pipes and we've had no issues whatsoever there. However, the copper house pipes and the section of copper pipe from the street to the house could've been installed at the same time and we've no idea how long ago that was - the house itself is over 70 years old.

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  4. I am so sorry for all this work you're both put through to solve another leak problem -- that is a crazy amount of pinhole leaks! Hoping this work is the last you'll have to do of its kind. Is there another kind of pipe that can be used in this stretch that is more leak-proof?

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    1. Apparently we have to replace this stretch of pipe with copper pipe because it connects directly to the copper pipes inside the house. PVC and other forms of plastic pipe aren't supposed to degrade as quickly as copper, which according to our plumber has about a 30-year lifespan. We believe that the irrigation lines feeding about 4/5ths of the property is PVC or an equivalent. There's been no sign of problems in any of those areas beyond simpler matters of broken sprinklers and the like. I expect it's entirely possible to replace all the pipes inside the house with plastic ones but I imagine that's a nightmare. If the new copper pipe outside lasts 30 years, fixing it again probably won't be our problem. In the meantime, we're looking at installing a system in the attic to detect any leaks inside the house.

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  5. Always an anxiety-provoking issue when these big repairs have to be done: so many things to move: who will be damaged or potentially killed. Hopefully you are able to get things temporarily housed without damaging the plants or yourselves.

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  6. What a terrible thing to happen to a gardener. I feel your pain. Such upheaval. We are all so conscious of how much water we use, savings the AC condensate is one-I guess you won't get much of that and it came as a surprise to me how much we get in the desert during the monsoon. My son in Phoenix has purchased a tank especially to collect this and was getting 5 gallons a day! I wish we all had grey water tanks. Hopefully your plants will be back in the ground for the wet season and will recover speedily.

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    1. Every drop of water lost is painful to me under current circumstances. We have a rudimentary grey water system, which distributes water from our clothes washer to an unirrigated area of our back slope. I have 3 rain collection tanks, which can collect up to 475 gallons of water shed by our roof and I manually collect water off a rain chain into plastic tubs and garbage cans as well. I've been collecting shower warm-up water daily for years too. I looked into an fog condensate system once but my scientist husband that it wasn't cost effective ;) I haven't heard of an AC-related system, but that's something I'll look at!

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  7. I'm sure your garden always looks amazing, but oh dear that's quite a project! And I know how difficult water restrictions can be since we faced that during the May to August drought of 2012 (no rain from mid-May to mid-August). But I can't imagine it happening nearly every year. I hope the pipe replacement happens as quickly as possible with no setbacks. Take care of yourself as much as you can during this challenging time.

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    1. Thanks Beth. We're considered a Mediterranean climate so it's normal for us to go about 6 months without any rain. We only occasionally get a stray summer rainstorm, usually due to a monsoonal system running off-course from the deserts to the east or a tropical system from the southern Pacific. Weather patterns are changing, though, so who knows what the future will bring; however, climate scientists aren't suggesting that we can expect any of the changes to be positive.

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