But . . . How Do You Water That?

Since we moved to New Mexico my brain has undergone a cognitive shift. I noticed it most profoundly as I was reading a book on gardening recently. Spirit of Place is a beautiful book about creating a garden. The author, Bill Noble, is the Director of Preservation for the Garden Conservancy and he has written a history of his own place on a reclaimed farm in Vermont. 

For a coffee table book filled with glossy photos, this was a well written, descriptive story and I ate up his descriptions of plants and failures and design ideas and planting successes. Loved it.

But at every turn, in every comment he made about plants he grew and spaces he created, I kept asking myself "yeah, but how do you water that?"

He described planting in dry areas and all I could think was -- "and did you put in irrigation? What kind of system? Drip or soakers?" He wrote about creating interesting spaces out away from the house to capture the distant mountain scenery, and I asked myself "how many feet of piping is needed to get water that far out? Does the water pressure hold for that distance?"

Ack. It is impossible for me now, three years into my garden experiment in the southwest, to look at any garden without framing it in water resources. Wet east coast gardens nestled in Vermont valleys have no such worries, and this book was a delight. But my brain just won't go there any more.

Like a starved woman craving food, my gardener's thoughts now always, always go to water. How to get it, how much to use, how little I might get away with, how to regulate it and what it costs. And when it might rain again.

My brain is fried.