I'm such a failure: I don't have a way to collect rain water, other than setting out empty buckets/containers during a shower (I actually do this, to use on my blueberry bushes). My gutters from the house roof direct straight to the sewers. I don't even have gutters on the garage roof. I have no rain water stored, at all.
Why a big deal, though? It rains all the time here! No need to save the rain water when it'll just come from the sky again, right?
Well, we've had a prolonged hot, dry spell. I guess it's been more than three weeks without rain on the garden, and temps in the mid to high 20s Celsius, with absolutely no cloud cover. The sun has baked my garden (and me: you should see my tan!) and the vegetables need a drink. I've even gone so far as to persuade the husband to drag out the hose for watering--in the late evening, of course, to reduce evaporation.
I used to collect rain water in a big plastic wheelie bin, meant for garden waste. We almost never send our garden waste off the property--I think it got filled one time last year, with a big wad of extremely prickly blackberry brambles which I couldn't face chopping up for my own compost. So this bin had been sitting empty on the driveway for ages, when my garage roof sprung a pretty substantial leak. We couldn't fix it immediately, so the wheelie bin went underneath it, and I would use the water for my patio containers every day. If it got too full I'd siphon it out the garage window usually into the pond, or occasionally onto a bed.
Now the garage roof is properly watertight again, I've got no rain water. And I need rain. What I wouldn't give for four or five big tanks, already filled from this spring's rain, especially now that water's scarce; I've read Northern Ireland has a hosepipe ban, and it's not inconceivable that we could be next.
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