(Hi … it’s me. I know, I know … it’s been a long time since I showed up in your inbox. I’m trying to reboot my blog, but this time I’m talking about my plants instead of my kids because my plants won’t embarrass me on TikTok if I mention them. If you’re a substack user, you can find me at: https://unhurriedhome.substack.com/)
Earlier this spring I applied for a rain garden grant that my city gives out, not expecting much.
The application was a lot and I put it off to the last minute, sending it (don’t judge me) ten minutes before the deadline.
It was … not good. I had to give details about my roof size, my soil type, the slope of my yard, etc, etc. I had to do math. Based on the size of half my roof and my soil (hello, clay), I apparently need a rain garden that’s 10m², which is insane, so I put down that I could make one that’s 5m², and even that was because I fully assumed we’d be rejected and I wouldn’t actually have to do it.
A Garden Tour
I attached a sketch of my backyard that my 18yo did using a google maps screenshot for accuracy, with a highly technical circle called “Puddle”, which is will be our rain garden. I like that my son included our supposed-to-be-indoor cat, who is the Houdini of house pets, and our yucca plant, which we tossed behind a shed about 13 years ago, and were shocked to see it STILL ALIVE, YEARS LATER, even though it was hovering between the fence and the shed and not at all touching the ground. At that point we had to plant it back in the ground, because it proved it wants to live despite our complete neglect, and that’s the exactly the kind of plant energy we like around here.
The red splotch that looks like a crime scene is the Drain-of-Doom which is connected to the city sewer. The drain is not my friend. It used to get filled with debris from my neighbour’s Northern Catalpa tree (Catalpa speciosa) every time it rained, clogging it up and sending all the excess water into my basement. We fixed that two years ago by adding a massive amount of dirt to half the yard, making the land slope away from the house instead of towards it, in what the professionals and everyone else in the world refer to as “proper grading”. We added so much dirt that we had to put in two large steps to enter the backyard now, but that’s okay — no basement flooding so far. Well, from rain. We did have a flood the other month when our kitchen drain started emptying out of the bathroom sink in the basement. The plumber said he’s never seen three entire forks wedged in a p-trap before. I guess he’s fancy and keeps his forks in a drawer or something.
But I digress.
To the east of the Drain-of-Doom, or maybe we’ll downgrade that to the Drain-of-Inconvenience, since it hasn’t been a source of flooding for two years but still requires monitoring, is our Raspberry patch and a huge Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus spreadicus, probably), which has to come down this summer because it’s trying obsessively repopulate the earth like the plant version of Elon Musk on one of his pronatalism kicks.
Directly south of the drain-of-inconvenience, which is very long and inconvenient to type out, is our Old Rain Garden. I added it maybe five years ago in an attempt to capture some of the rain water before it headed to my basement. However, with the new backyard grading, it’s now the worlds driest rain garden. Or, if you will, a regular garden.
Then we have the Trampoline, which gets used enthusiastically for a solid seven minutes once every two months, but it stays because I don’t have the capacity to figure out what to do with the space it’s occupying.
Beside the trampoline is our Sedge Garden, which is mostly Pennsylvania sedge (Carex pensylvanica), three Gray’s sedges (Carex grayi), and one large chunk of grass that snuck in somehow. I love my sedge + one sneaky grass garden. Expect many posts of just native sedges because now I collect them the way other people collect teacups.
The three square/rectangles on the map are the Veggie Gardens, which is a bit of misnomer because while yes, they do grow veggies, those veggies belong to the black raspberries, who viciously defend the green beans and cucumbers with the most stabby little thorns you can imagine. But you know what? That’s fine. I love berries way more than green beans or cucumber, and I would rather start another veggie garden than fight back. Except I can’t. Because — spoiler alert — I have to make a massive rain garden now.
The last part of the drawing is the Dirt Pile of Full of Bees, which I’ll let you figure out, and the Gazebo, which is just a concrete pad with a bare gazebo frame because the gazebo company doesn’t make the canopy tops anymore and I refuse to throw a perfectly good frame away, even though it looks ridiculous now.
The Rain Ready Grant
I didn’t hear back from the city program for awhile and I assumed we didn’t qualify, and that was fine, because like I said, it probably wasn’t the strongest application. But then two and a half weeks later, I got the email: pre-approved.
Really? I can only imagine it was the photos from my property that got us the grant. Look at that sad, soggy backyard. Thankfully the lake drained away before any Canada Geese claimed it as their home.
In my defence, this was after 17mm of rain. I don’t know if that’s a lot of rain, but it felt like a lot. And this was taken mid-April, which was colder than normal, and the ground was probably pretty hard. It’s still so bad though. 😂
Still Undecided…
The next step for the grant was a virtual meeting to go over my application, and I was so stressed out about it. Like, maybe this is too much for me. Last summer I was so depressed that I didn’t get any of my native plants in the ground, but this year I’m somehow going to plant a huge garden? I’m afraid that I’m going to do all this work and find out I screwed up somehow, like I didn’t document it properly, or I’ll miss an important step that disqualifies me. Honestly, I still feel anxious right now, just writing about it.
The grant is for $500 for plants, which is AMAZING, yet on the day of my consultation, I had almost talked myself out of it. I figured I could probably do a rain garden for free with seeds from seed swaps and some intensive winter sowing, and then I wouldn’t have to answer to anyone, and no one would judge my garden (besides all the people walking past us in my alley, because privacy fences are really expensive).
Despite my reservations, I went through the very straightforward consult, and then at the end, they confirmed that we’ve been approved for the $1500 tier, and I’m sorry, what? $1500? For PLANTS?
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Wow. Okay, so we’re making a rain garden.
(Original post: https://unhurriedhome.substack.com/p/so-i-have-to-make-a-really-big-rain)
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