Planting the rain, eclipse

All these crazy earth working and mulching projects. Folk ask what the heck do you do?
I plant the rain. However odd that can sound...
I mean I plant the rain literally, I direct it from the house and slow it down.
I couple of the areas Like top bed I mulched I can not do the sponge and run off diversion because of how concrete driveway is laid out, but I can sponge what falls on it so no run off is from it, and that's how my ponderosa are fed, I did 2 dry creeks that are long and 3-rd on the way to redirect water to the orchard. This was weeds and bare dirt. There is no irrigation in here what so ever except the rain
there things are taller than a human now. I can support a tree or several now in this area.

I redirect and sponge water from garage and shed and make it so it does not run into chicken houses and makes mud bath there. I support aspens. They have some irrigation but it's like 1 mini spray that drops 1 gallon a minute and runs for 25 min, 1/2 gallon is not enough to support 4 large aspens and loads of their babies and poplar tree in there that volunteered all the sudden.


Here is same bed end of August

2 aspens turned into small aspen grove, these are fed from run off roofs of house and garage. the wicker bed is fed by dry-creek 2 on right side of garage (concrete driveway runoff and roof run off from the garage), has no other irrigation but the rain

The area next to the road is leveled with wood chips and finished, road wood chips is finished as well

I did not 'cut sidewalk the curb yet (aka landscaping beams) when we did our new flower bed and changed it from rock and weed fabric to (green leaves and wood chips)-compost-(dry tree take out wood chips) lasagna covering to lead lots of water into the garden, garden is laid as sponge of 4 vertical and 3 horizontal rows that are lower, and vertical beds are wetter now. It gets run off from gutters.

With all the mulching I did I can support over 100 of trees. The soil is moist under the wood chips.
And I see more roly-poli eating spiders now.

I slow and redirect water to my orchard and to my future vineyard. I'll cut this dry creek and redirect the water to new apple tree when I observe another year

What I've noticed the ground water is high already, about 2.2 feet under that new tree, when it grows the roots there it will not need the basin per say.
that's why It's wood chipped and it also has no irrigation. It's Antonovka zone 2 apple tree.
I'm cheeking the soil n that area regularly, it seems to be moist already, still this passive irrigation area is under the observation. It's not massive weeds anymore as one can see.
And has couple of wet grass species that did run off and volunteered.
Will see if they are perennials.


The challenge I have is folk who spray pesticides and herbicides and some of it ends in run off or carried by the wind.

I can not do much about it now but in several years when they see what my property has become I can. 2 immediate neighbors do not want to do any of it so. So I can not replace the neighbor, I'm planting wind block so I can isolate sensitive plants from dicamba and other roundup+ trouble

Meanwhile America had eclipse yesterday.
It was interesting to see on the lake and in the forest

 Forest has millions of little eclipses on the ground from leaves

All these huge trees are sponge forest near the lake.
We do have lakes, I'm not near one but I could change how out hood HOA looks at water evaporation and lakes and loosing the water.
We have similar trees near our lakes and we have bare water wasting bare grass beaches. This nature park service lake was also in areas where agriculture is and the corn fields, they have massive fog there the lake takes, so do we, we do have natural inversion in our area. The lake we went to is surrounded by the forest, not very deep one and that forest is it's protection and the sponge.

Here is Ted short video about the same.