How long does it take to fill three 50-gallon rain barrels?
One rainy day in Houston, it seems. I’ll get to that.But before I tell you about the barrels, you should know something about the man who installed them.I have never claimed to be handy. I can change a light bulb (if someone holds the ladder), water plants, and move clothes from the washer to the dryer. That’s about where my handy skills end.
Gardening is even further outside my lane. Roses, gardenias, petunias, I don’t have a clue. But thanks to TWWNCBUIP (The Wife Whose Name Cannot Be Used in Print, for those of you who have asked), we have all of those and more in our yard. We even won Yard of the Month earlier this spring. That was nice, but it was never her goal. It was all about the bumble bees, the butterflies, and the hummingbirds.Well, all of that takes water. Lots of water. And that brings me to the gutters.See, we have lived in our starter home for over 50 years now and never once thought we needed gutters. Then came the tv commercials. You know the ones. These fancy gutters that no leaf can get into, and before long I wanted our little house to look that put together too.
After enough of those commercials, we started looking at our gutterless little house the way you look at a man who left home without his belt. Fifty years of doing just fine, and suddenly our home did not feel complete without gutters. When our Memphis son, who is not only an artist but it seems quite the gardener, heard that mom and dad were finally putting up gutters, he insisted we also get rain barrels to catch that rainwater for the plants. Plants are happier with rainwater, he says. Someday it will even save us money, once we pay off the barrels, the cement blocks, the concrete tablets, oh yeah, and all that black star gravel.
See, these projects are never just one thing. If you have barrels to catch the rain, you need to build a little (table? altar? shrine?) to set the barrels on. Before you build the little whatever-it-is, you need a bed of gravel to absorb any water the barrels don’t catch. And then you need these little shoes to direct the rainwater that comes shooting out of the downspouts into TWWNCBUIP’s garden. My job in all this planning was mostly to nod.But first, the gutters. We read a million reviews of the various and sundry gutter companies in our fair city and settled on one that was Veteran owned (loved that part) and sold by Natasha. Lots and lots of five star reviews for this little gutter company. But after our job was completed, we decided all those five star reviews were wrong. Natasha and her crew deserved stars all the way up to eleven.Here’s why. Remember way back when I told you guys about the tree that fell on our house? It crushed some tiles at the very front, but when the Travelers guy came to assess the damage, he deemed it cosmetic, and our deductible was way more than the repair. So those crinkled tiles stayed crinkled, because, well, I did mention that I am not the handy guy, right?
Little did we know the tree had also nudged one tile, just a little bit, and over the last three years that little bit became a bigger situation in our attic. The roof had to be fixed before the fancy new gutters could go up. Natasha not only found us a roofer, she found one who charged $600 for the job. The bid we had gotten the day before was $2,400. Natasha to the rescue.Repairing the damage from that one tipsy tile turned out to be only the first surprise.Then we learned that our little starter home’s roof is slightly cockeyed, which meant one of the downspouts had to go right by the front door, because the water would not drain downhill over the garage like it was supposed to. We were really, really not happy about this piece of news. Once again, Natasha had a plan. A rain chain! I had no idea what she was talking about, but TWWNCBUIP thought this rain chain scheme was a great solution, so I nodded along like a man who knew what a rain chain was. I guess I’ll find out.The gutters went up, and it rained the next day. As you all know, it rained a lot. Turns out, a torrential downpour is a pretty good way to test your rain catchers.
The test revealed one little flaw in our plan. When you send all that rain off the roof and out the downspout, it has to go somewhere. The downspouts in the back were fine, because we already had a French drain back there to carry the water away. The one on the side of the house was another story. That water went down the little walkway and pooled up around the stepping stones. I now have a river where my path used to be.So I have a new job on Monday, when a load of black star gravel will be delivered. I’ll be making a bed for my river. Wish me luck.As for the rest of the rain, it was supposed to go into the rain barrels and be saved for the dry months. I’m not sure when Houston has dry months, but remember, I’m not a gardener nor a weatherman.
The three rain barrels arrived. I scanned the instructions rather than read them, which is how I missed that the box contained both zip ties and hose clamps, and that the instructions explained exactly when to use which. I used zip ties where I should have used hose clamps and installed a 12-inch overflow hose where I needed a 36 inches hose.The first good rain set me straight. Water went places water should not go. I took the whole thing apart, put it back together, got it wrong again, and finally drained all three barrels (150 gallons, one rainy day’s worth) just to get the connections right.While I was losing my fight with the barrels, TWWNCBUIP was already on to the next project: a trellis from H. Potter. It arrived in a flat box. I unpacked it, set the pieces aside, and then another downpour hit. Between storms I tidied up, broke down the boxes, and threw everything out. Felt good about that.A few days later I went to assemble the trellis and noticed something missing. The bolts. I checked the garage. I checked the recycling. Trash day had come and gone. The bolts, it turns out,
had been in the packaging.
TWWNCBUIP did not say much. She didn’t have to.Which is how a man ends up apologizing to a trellis company for losing parts he never knew he had. I’ve got a call in to H. Potter.After that, I have to get my tree straightened. (Don’t ask. That’s a story for another rainy day.)The to-do list, like the rain barrels, fills faster than I can empty it.
