The plant waterer

I don’t know how it happened.  I used to do almost all of the container watering at our house. . . as long as we’ve had containers, that’s been primarily my chore.  (Admittedly, because I chose to do them, bought the plants for them, and potted them up, it certainly made sense that chore would fall to me.) I would do it almost every day after work—a chore I enjoyed in early summer, but got really, really tired of by summer’s end.

But this summer, the watering duties seem to have magically fallen onto Trevor’s list.

It probably happened because of a number of reasons. First of all, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve made the switch to MUCH bigger containers than I used to use, a few at a time over the past few years.  I never buy a pot anymore that’s smaller than about 2 feet wide at the top.  I do have just a couple of smaller ones that I still use because they’re part of a set (and because they’re pretty), but I try to plant things in them that don’t need as much water.  So, for that reason, the watering has trickled down (haha) from a daily chore to a two- or three-times-a-week chore at most, even when it’s quite dry and warm.  (Bigger containers and deeper, less frequent watering is a very good thing.)

My coal bucket--one of my smaller containers

Secondly, this summer, especially earlier in the season, we had quite a bit of rain, which means we didn’t have to worry about watering much at all in the first few weeks.

The other thing that, I think, has been instrumental in “the switch” is that, in addition to getting off work an hour before I do Monday through Thursday, Trevor also has Friday afternoons off.  So, particularly if we’re getting ready to leave for the lake as soon as I’m off work at 4:30, he gets the lawn mowed and trimmed and gets everything watered so that all we have to do is pack up the car and get out of town. But his typical routine has been to mow, trim, edge (whatever he thinks the lawn needs), and then water all the containers every Friday, whether we’re staying in town or not.  And this, in combination with the fact that, for at least half the summer, watering every Friday was just about enough, has seemed to contribute to the fact that I think I’ve actually only watered the pots once all summer.

I do water the front window boxes a few times a week, because they’re kind of small (so they need it more often) and he often forgets about them.  (Most of our pots are in back, in fairly easy reach of the hose.)

But when the two front window boxes are compared to all the other watering he’s just been sort of taking care of all summer, seamlessly making “the switch”. . .  I think I can
handle that.    (And thank you, honey, for the best 15 years of my life. Happy Anniversary!)