welcome to the organic green doctor blog

i am a family physician who was diagnosed with
early mild cognitive impairment(mci) amnestic type on december 21, 2010
this is a precursor to alzheimers disease
because of this diagnosis i have opted to stop practicing medicine
this blog will be about my journey with this disease
please feel free to follow me along this path
i will continue blogging on organic gardening, green living,
solar power, rainwater collection, and healthy living
i will blog on these plus other things noted to be interesting

Tuesday, August 24, 2021

theres too much there and not enough here

THERES TOO MUCH THERE AND NOT ENOUGH HERE

this is a picture of six 50 gallon rainwater tanks that i hooked up at the school where i volunteered in the kindergarten garden
some were donated and i found a good price on the others
i used my rainwater tank knowledge gained from hooking up my own 30,000 gallon tanks system at the country n

i also later put in two 50 gallon tanks at the community garden to catch water off our chicken coop

so adding those together we can collect with an one inch rain a total of 400 gallons
thats 400 gallons that would have ran off mostly into the ocean eventually
now it stays locally in the gardens

the kids use the kindergarten rainwater to water their veggies 
the community garden uses its rainwater to hand water plants
i also rain the overflow pipe into my garden so it fills up trenches of mulch as a sort of holding basin
so a lot of water gets left in our gardens and not lost to run off

what if every house had to have a rainwater tank here
thats a lot of water that could be saved

we only get on average about 13 inches a year compared to the country n where we got on average about 33 inches a year

this year here we got a lot less
its showing up as wildfires 
i swear the wildfires seem worse every year ive lived here

next month in california water rationing will be instituted
not sure what that means
but
it usually starts as volunteer rationing
which we all know doesnt really work

lake mead where the colorado river runs into is the lowest its been since the damn was built
that triggers massive water rationing
agriculture will be hit hard
expect almonds if you can find them to be extremely expensive
california produces a lot of our food we eat in the us
its going to be severely affected

places like las vegas and los angeles and phoenix and other large cities get their water from the colorado river

add to that drought problem the problems of immigration limiting farm workers and the pandemic affecting the workers and the wildfires
you can see a disaster in the making

then 
you look back eastward
its just the opposite
hurricanes and flooding and tornados causing mass destruction
the hurricanes just seem to come in waves dont they 

they have way too much water
we dont have enough

i wish there was a way to get that water out this way 
tboone pickens knew what he was doing scooping up water rights didnt he

im not sure what the solution here is
conservation for us will be important
there are no other sources of water here
santa barbara does have a desalinating plant that provides some water from the ocean
they also have a good diversity of water sources to chose from 
but
they all have the potential to dry up except for the ocean sources

this may be where some infrastructure money could be spent to help 
how im not sure

sorry short of conservation and working on climate change 
i dont have a solution 

we do our part
we limit water use in our house
i use a drip system for my garden 
i water deep underground
i mulch my garden heavily 

i guess living where you only use rainwater for all your water needs teaches you how to conserve water
so you wont run out of water
i use the rainwater in those tanks in the garden as much as possible
i only occasionally wash my car

now
we just need to figure out how to get that water from back east out here to the west

the organicgreen doctor

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