Monsoons are here with high humidity, warm temperatures, strong winds and some heavy rainstorms almost daily. It almost feels like tropical rainforest conditions.
In the soupy atmosphere everything, including biting gnats and mosquitoes, is either growing like crazy or flopping over, struggling with wind shear and the pounding force of the very masculine, yang, storm rain.
Today is day 6 of a 7 day, fifty hour yin yoga teacher training, so I have not spent any time on garden maintenance for a week. It’s showing.
However I’m really grateful that monsoon storms have taken over my watering duties. This week anyway.
The two rainwater barrels installed so far, are the overflowing. The hacienda roof still leaks (sigh).
My local government authority, having taken taxes from me and all other residents, to provide municipal infrastructure, has bought us sandbags for storm water and flood control. We can fetch the empty bags from the police station (if we can find someone to hand them out). And then we fill them up ourselves.
Yes, I have chosen to live in a community built on a swamp on the banks of a big river. Fortunately the hacienda is above the flood plane. Stormwater just forms a fairly temporary, raging torrent in the street at the end of my front path. This water is in a hurry to get to the river and can become quite dangerous as it gathers force, depending on the storm.
Downtown, the former swamp and the prized (historic) hotsprings district, floods every time there’s a storm.
Oh well. Monsoons only last a few weeks. But those sandbags might be useful for building retaining wall in the garden. Hope there are some left next week when my training is over.
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