{"id":5912,"date":"2021-05-31T12:46:42","date_gmt":"2021-05-31T19:46:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kbtechworks.com\/kbranch\/blog\/?p=5912"},"modified":"2021-05-31T12:46:42","modified_gmt":"2021-05-31T19:46:42","slug":"easing-into-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kbtechworks.com\/kbranch\/blog\/archives\/5912","title":{"rendered":"Easing into summer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There has been another fire in Horseshoe Canyon this month (the Warren fire), which has brought lots of firefighters and jets doing retardant drops. While it&#8217;s been windy, there have been enough breaks for the planes to get in, which has helped a lot. At this point, the fire is about 50% contained, and they are starting to reallocate resources.<\/p>\n<p>Other than that, it&#8217;s been a pleasant spring here, cooler than usual. We&#8217;ve had lots of beautiful birds and have seen three gila monsters, including a mating pair.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kbtechworks.com\/kbranch\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/PXL_20210512_161918819.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-5913 \" src=\"https:\/\/www.kbtechworks.com\/kbranch\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/PXL_20210512_161918819.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"555\" height=\"289\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.kbtechworks.com\/kbranch\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/PXL_20210512_161918819.jpg 909w, https:\/\/www.kbtechworks.com\/kbranch\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/PXL_20210512_161918819-300x156.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.kbtechworks.com\/kbranch\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/PXL_20210512_161918819-768x400.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 555px) 100vw, 555px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The garden is doing well. I&#8217;ve been focusing on our soil and have begun doing some in-bed composting in the beds I am resting. It seems to be working well.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We are also beginning a project I have wanted to do for some time &#8212; rain water harvesting. I have talked to people who harvest rain water for all their water needs (washing, drinking, garden, etc.) even with rainfall as low as ours. (We get about 15-20 inches a year, though that varies considerably.) The trick is to have a very big tank. There are calculators for the tank size you need based on average rainfall, peak rainfall in volume per unit of time, and collection area.<\/p>\n<p>To date, we&#8217;ve just done very small collection with buckets under the roofline. We&#8217;re going to expand this gradually, starting with new gutters and a small-ish thousand or so gallon used tank that we were given. Then after we get this installed and working, we can add things like a larger tank and possibly plumbing and a pump out to the garden.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The last year and a half has made me reflect more on our impact on the environment. I like this approach to projects, starting small with recycled materials and then scaling up as appropriate.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There has been another fire in Horseshoe Canyon this month (the Warren fire), which has brought lots of firefighters and jets doing retardant drops. While it&#8217;s been windy, there have been enough breaks for the planes to get in, which has helped a lot. At this point, the fire is about 50% contained, and they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[73,135,187,45],"class_list":["post-5912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-garden","tag-growing","tag-water","tag-wildlife"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kbtechworks.com\/kbranch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kbtechworks.com\/kbranch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kbtechworks.com\/kbranch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kbtechworks.com\/kbranch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kbtechworks.com\/kbranch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5912"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kbtechworks.com\/kbranch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5915,"href":"https:\/\/www.kbtechworks.com\/kbranch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5912\/revisions\/5915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kbtechworks.com\/kbranch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kbtechworks.com\/kbranch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kbtechworks.com\/kbranch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}