19 August 2016
It’s been a miserable summer at the TreeHouse – hot, sticky, muggy, but little or no rain, so we’re officially in an “extreme drought” northeast of Boston, and our lawn looks like it! We’ve sworn off pouring treated drinking water onto our lawn for a number of years, and in past years it hadn’t been a problem. But this year, it’s a problem. Most of our lawn is now brown, except for the southwest corner that got the benefit of a failed flower-sprinkler-timer that shut on and didn’t shut off over a five-day period that we were up in Maine. The sprinkler timer was supposed to water the marigolds that line the front walk for 90 minutes every two days via a couple of soaker hoses that run along the front walk on either side. The southwest corner of the lawn was under water when we finally got home, and that area has endured while all the rest of the lawn went crunchy long ago.
The muggy heat has put a crimp in my ability to do much yard work either, so the shrubs along the front of the house are in extreme need of trimming too, but that won’t happen until I can bring the electric hedge trimmer back down from Maine. Maybe in two weekends. Sigh!
Woburn has a enacted a voluntary water ban (don’t water on Mondays, Wednesdays, or Fridays). The only watering we do is for flowers; 2 hours on the raised flowerbeds out back once every five days, one minute of the drip system on the deck each morning for the four hanging plants, and occasional watering of the front walk marigolds when they look like they need it. The raised-bed watering also nourishes the Concord grape vine on the pergola so it’s flourishing. I’ll have to start keeping an eye one the grapes now to make sure I harvest them after they ripen but before the birds get to them. I misjudged last year and didn’t get any harvest. I assume the birds enjoyed them.
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