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Emma's RainSeptember 10, 2005 Have I said lately, like in the last ten minutes, that we haven't had a lot of rain this summer? The other day someone said that the last measurable rainfall was around July 9, and I'd swear without looking it up that the last meaningful rainfall was two or three weeks before that. So I figured Mama Nature wouldn't mind a little assistance in making the grass grow on Emma's grave. Arranging this took a fair bit of fetch-and-carrying, mostly of hoses, which, as most horse people can tell you, are generally dirty, unruly, and heavier than they look. The nearest outdoor faucet has a hose attached to it, but that hose is too short and it's jammed on so tight that if I wrenched it off I'd probably strip the threads on both the hose and the faucet. I retrieved a cheap plastic sprinkler from the nearby brush, set that in place, and went off to get the hose that we mostly use to water the ring -- which doesn't need watering at the moment because it's being rehabbed. Every barn I've been at, I've watched thousands of gallons of water go to laying down the dust in indoor arenas and outdoor rings, usually when the horses' pastures go brown for lack of rain. This makes me queasy. My current rationalization is that the fields are too big to water without irrigation, and the water comes from the groundwater and then returns to it -- in other words, I'm probably wasting more water by flushing my toilet. This summer, the water sprinkled on the ring has encouraged the growth of some hardy greenery in the middle of what looks, quite literally, like a desert. Anyhow, I ran the indoor hose from the tackroom, out the window, and halfway across Emma's old paddock. There I attached the 100-foot hose from the ring, ran it under the pasture fence, and attached it to the cheap plastic sprinkler. Then I returned to the barn, via two gates, to turn the water on. Cheap plastic sprinkler gushed rather than sprinkled, because it was apparently made to be attached to two hoses and I couldn't find anything to plug up the second hole. I turned the water off and went to get the tall "rainpole" sprinkler that we use for the ring -- which I should have done in the first place, but I was too lazy. That configuration did the trick, and the grass on Emma's grave got about 45 minutes of sprinkling while I did chores. It'll get another half hour or so when I go back to feed. I'm no gardener, mind you, and if I ever had a lawn of my own, it would probably go to brown within a season. But Emma appreciated green grass better than most human householders, and she'd probably like to know that the greenest grass on the farm was in her corner, even if she doesn't get to eat it.
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