Yesterday we dug a grave for a much loved cat. She was hit by a car, and she was only five years old. She was a glorious creature, filling our garden refuge with her magic and playfulness, chasing butterflies, rolling around in the dirt, playing hide and seek with her squirrel friend. It seems lonely in the garden now. The animals are quiet, and last night I dreamt that Mr. Squirrel was pawing at the window, begging me to tell him where his friend Mimi has gone.

Mimi in all her glory enjoying a belly rub

My husband Paul wanted Mimi’s grave to be deep, so that no animals would dig her up; he had to use a breaker bar to dig. The soil was that dry. We kept hoping that as he dug deeper, we’d find wetter soil, but we didn’t. The soil is heavy clay, which holds water for a long time, but which is slow to take up water when it rains. The fact that it is dry all the way down to three or four feet is alarming. How will the trees stay alive? I’m amazed at how many of them are still green, though they are showing signs of stress. We’re getting no figs this year, as the soil is so dry that the figs won’t ripen. Some of the trees have very small fruit (medlar, pear), and some have a dead branch or two.

In my own town in the Pacific Northwest, this severe drought (actually, its official title is “unprecedented”) has led to a declaration of a level III water emergency. So far. It doesn’t usually rain until mid to late October here, so we have a long way to go before we get relief. One problem is that our water source is a creek, Turner Creek, which gets impounded in the summer. Turner Creek, which is in many spots only one inch deep and nowhere more than five inches deep, is drying up. What this means for us right now is that we are not allowed to water at all. NOT AT ALL. There are civil penalties of up to some 450$ for violations, and after three violations you can have your water shut off. It’s very possible that, given the heat and the small size of our creek, we’ll run out of running water. At present we still have enough water to wash dishes and clothes and flush toilets, but our town doesn’t have enough water to fight a fire. My new mantra is water never gets used just once. There is a principle in Permaculture that tells us every element in a system should have many functions, and every function should be performed by many elements. Nowhere is that more obvious than in our use of water.

In the spirit of preserving this precious resource, the next few blog posts will be about methods we are using to keep ourselves and our home clean, and our plants alive, without using very much water. These posts will be called The Drought Chronicles, and I hope they are helpful to you in some way. While my town is certainly in an extreme position, many other towns are close behind us. Besides, doesn’t saving water seem the right thing to do? Just the other day my husband remarked, “it’s amazing how little water we actually need!”, and we all feel that even when the rains come, and the crisis passes (until the next hot summer), we should continue to live this way. I believe it was the people of Standing Rock who coined the term, Water Is Life, and now I have discovered how right they are.

Volunteer Sunflower holding its own against the drought.