When Water Was Cheap to Use

 

When Water Was Cheap to Use

 I moved here in the fall of 1984 and started gardening, hauling leaves full of earthworms in the outer foot of the piles from the leaf dump near Riverside Park.  Come spring of ‘85, when I started watering, the water bill was just over $25 in base rates: $20 for water; and $5 for sewer.  Water unit rates were pennies on the dollar and no unit rates on sewer.  In July and August, it got just over $26 from irrigation.  Our City was clean, green and beautiful and forest fires were far from any cities.

We had thunderstorms nearly every weekend of that summer.  I was enchanted by thunderstorms, but wondered: “Why only on the weekends?”  Sixteen years later, taking Landscape Management at RCC, I learned that most people couldn’t afford automatic irrigation and had to water on the weekends, hauling a sprinkler around and using mechanical timers.

Back in 1985, I learned that if I didn’t water because it looked like rain, it wouldn’t rain enough to make a difference, as many other people felt the same.  I created what I called a gardening superstition: “If you don’t water because you think it will rain, it won’t rain enough to matter.”

 

10-1-25-2025 2-minute Speech to Grants Pass City Council

Published at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com and shared on Facebook and Nextdoor

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 Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener     541-955-9040     rycke@gardener.com