rain garden

raingarden
Originally uploaded by Andrew Ciscel

We're still waiting to hear whether we've got the house. I understand the paperwork is running through the process as normal on a short sale, and that so far things look promising. Fingers and toes are crossed.

In the mean time, I've been considering what it will mean to have a house with a real yard for the first time. Mowing. Raking leaves. Pulling weeds. The Mister and I are discussing composting grass clippings/leaves wherever we end up living. He'd like to do a square foot garden for beets and such.

And there's something I'm totally taken with now that I'd never heard of when I lived in semi-arid Southern California.

Rain gardens.

Gardens designed to help control runoff from your property when it rains, encouraging more of that water to soak into the soil and get filtered by plants instead of ending up in storm drains. I am all excited about this concept. Partly because they can be pretty, and can be good for local wildlife if you use native plants. And partly because they keep the crud that ends up on your roof from air pollution - and other crud picked up by runoff as it heads to the street and storm drains - out of lakes and streams.

Here are a couple of the websites I've been snooping around on while reading up on the subject:

Rain Garden Network

Gardens for a Rainy Day (MN DNR)