Stigma! Stigma! Stigma! and My Claypot

In my last post I said I thought "water abuser" was a creepy title. This week it seemed possible I might get hauled in for being one. It happened at the old homestead.

When my husband’s grandfather, Mr. Boyd, came to Florida in 1956, he bought several lots a mile from the beach where he built cottages and rented them to vacationers for income. The cottages were simple and small. He built them single handedly in the old Florida style. Jalousie windows with cross ventilation let plenty of airflow through the house: it was hot air, but it moved. Then he planted palms, a sausage tree, rubber tree, myrtles and a cypress to hang over and cool the air outside.

The properties never had a real lawn or an irrigation system, but he did put a planter with shrubs across the front of each (before people started getting artsy with their yards).

Fast forward to this week 2008. Florida is on water restrictions. The water management district allows irrigating two days a week, and this week on a watering day I was at the cottages, which we now own. I took the opportunity to give the shrubs in the planter a drink from the hose. Technically, irrigation systems are to operate during the wee morning hours, but we have no system. It was late afternoon after work.

I was tucking the hose into the planter when my husband called me urgently from next door. A medicine cabinet he was installing was slipping; he needed me. I raced off to help. Five minutes later, I returned outside to find an official looking young woman dressed in khakis and a shirt with an emblem. She held a clipboard and was staring at my hose, now flipped out of the planter and gushing blatantly on the ground. “Stigma! Stigma! Stigma!” my brain accused. “You just turned into a water abuser and she’s officially writing you up!”

Actually, she wasn’t; she was going door-to-door selling pest control, but the incident does make a point. Never trust a hose left alone; they’ll run all over.

There is a plan in the works for the cottage yards, one that includes rain barrels, abundant native shrubs, micro-irrigation and possibly turning the 20-year dormant septic tanks into rainwater cisterns for irrigation.

For immediate results, there might be another solution. Clay pot irrigation. It’s ancient and it’s efficient using far less water. Pots are placed into the ground near the shrub and filled with water. As water sweats through the clay walls the roots of the shrub are drawn to the moisture. Mini-cisterns from clay flowerpots are easy to make. Two clay pots of the same size, sealed together with waterproof caulk around the edge. The hole of one pot is sealed with caulk. Bury the pot next to the shrub with the open hole just above ground. Fill the pots with water as needed.

Here are photos of one I planted.