Water Conservation-Ma Style

My mom loves to garden. It is the one interest she still has. She is outside as soon as she can get out in the morning and is hard to get in at dark. She looks at plant catalogs like a kid with the JC Penney Christmas. She will go through them and circle things, bend over pages and make lists galore of all the things she wants. She will present me with this and ask if I will call in an order. I always tell her I can do it on line and of course she doesn't understand how that works and she'll tell me that if I do that I won't get the wonderful savings of the coupon they always put on the front of these catalogs to make her think she's getting a real deal. She also feels that time is of the essence since the money saving coupon is only good until such and such a date. I'm always telling her that there will be another "special" in the mailbox tomorrow but there is all this urgency in her mind to ORDER NOW!!

She has presented me with orders for almost $300 in plants. I say-"no Ma, I'm sorry, I just can't spend that kind of money on plants right now". She'll say that she can't believe it is that much. Once, without thinking I told her to add it up and she would see that it was $300 and that the $20 off wasn't really going to help me much. Since she couldn't add it up, I got out the calculator and showed her the total. Reluctantly she started going through the book again like a disappointed kid to see what she could live without.

Part of gardening , of course is watering. She LOVES to water things whether they need it or not. Unfortunately, our water is not cheap and we have had drought conditions. Last summer when the water bill hit $130 for a month my husband (who usually doesn't say much about Ma's hobby costs) hit the roof and said he didn't care if every one of her darn plants croaked

I always hate to tell her about bills etc. because it makes her feel like she is a burden. What I DID tell her was that because of the drought, we were under water restrictions (which was about to happen). I suggested she get some of the buckets we had around to catch rain water (when we had any) and that maybe she could cut back on the watering a bit.

The next thing I knew she had every pail, bucket, dishpan, trashcan etc. lined up on the deck where the water runs off the roof ready to catch rain water. The next phase of the project was to take old towels and cut them up to make tops for all of these containers to filter the water. Lord only knows we do not want to water OUR plants with dirty water!!! After she cut the towels to fit, she took green yard and went around and around the filter to keep it tied on the container.

Then came the rain. She was thrilled that she was ready! The next phase was that she had to go out there and take water from one container to another to fill up the big ones and get the smaller ones ready for the next rain. Of course, if she determined that the filters were too dirty, they would have to be washed before she could possibly tie them to the top of the container. In addition, if the container itself looked dirty it would have to be scrubbed out as well.

Mother is basically in her electric chair so you can imagine this is quite a difficult process for her. Fortunately, we have some WONDERFUL ladies that stay with her that put up with all of this nonsense and help her to get the projects done. You can imagine with all of the bucket scrubbing and towel filter laundering that went on that we did not save much water!

This Spring I bought her 2 rain barrel which had mesh filters and chicken wire on top but nope, that wasn't good enough either, she had to make filters. I have seen some of my good towels cut in half tied to the top of a rain catching container. We thought last summer would probably be the last that she would even be interested in the projects but this has not been the case. She is raring to go and has already got 2 rain barrels filled and the other containers gathering water even now.

All of this brings her alot of joy and gives her purpose. Anyone with buckets or towels for filters that you'd like to donate to the cause-let me know.