Thirsty

We had a blessing of a little more rain last week. The current climate condition tends to bring some intense downpour in a short time. The last one probably lasted less than an hour and still created some minor flush flood in our neighborhood. Yet for this extremely thirsty earth around here, it is so refreshing to be wet.

So I’m thinking a lot about water these days. Where we live, we get our water from local well owned by the community. We’ve been told our waterbed is getting dangerously low, and the water in our surrounding communities are already restricted for drinking as the water level has gone too low that nitrate level is too high. As is in many municipalities around California, we, too are restricted to use our irrigation only twice a week. In my household, we pool the water in a bucket while we wait for the shower to get warm and use it to flush the toilet (sorry if it’s gross) and just started using the water from our kitchen sink after washing veggies and rinsing dishes to water our plants outside. Twice a week irrigation was apparently not enough as the heat has been so intense that the some of trees started to turn brown.

Sadly, this is the reality we live in. While living in the city, I couldn’t see how this climate is rapidly and intensely affecting our plants. Other than physically feeling the unbearable heat during some of the heat waves (although I was mostly spared from the triple-digits temps living on the Westside), we don’t really see how the plants are suffering unless you get out to the nature.

We installed low flow faucets in the kitchen and bathrooms a couple of years ago. And I’m trying to learn about capturing rain water, reusing the “grey water (such as water from shower, vanity faucet, and laundry)”. There’s actually a lot we can do about it, but it feels daunting. So I must take a mindful approach… taking one little step at a time to do my part.