This story holds water

In case you weren't aware yet, collecting water runoff in a rain barrel is an eco-friendly way to prevent erosion and provide a water supply for your outdoor needs. I first started considering a rain barrel when I moved into my house, but after thinking about the amount of water I spend on my lawn and gardens (none), I decided a rain barrel probably wouldn't be the most worthwhile investment. Last spring, that all changed when I planted some seeds in the backyard and had to water them a handful of times. This got me to thinking that maybe a rain barrel wouldn't be such a bad idea after all.

The timing was perfect. That summer, I learned that if I installed a rain barrel outside my home, Prince George's County would reimburse me the cost of the rain barrel, as part of the Rain Check Rebate program. If the rain barrel cost me nothing, well, that was a horse of a different color! At minimum, it would create at least one spot in my yard where the gutters don't run directly into the ground next to the foundation. So I bought and installed a rain barrel.

A lot of time passed. Summer turned to fall, fall turned to winter, the water in the rain barrel alternately iced up and overflowed out the overflow hose (right into the ground next to the foundation, SMH), and I still hadn't used a drop of the water I collected. I needed to step up my rain game.

Other than watering the plants in my landscape (of which there are few, and which I have very little interest in watering after their planting day), the first use I came up with for the rain barrel was to hose off my bike after riding it home in messy weather. For this, I tried to use the garden hose I already have attached to the front yard spigot, but it was too long and too high off the ground to produce enough gravity-powered pressure to blast the gunk off the bike. So I was obliged to purchase a hose, naturally the cheapest one I could find: a 15-dollar spiral hose that also failed to produce enough pressure to blast the gunk off my bike (I should have expected that, but optimism won over my tenuous grasp of hydraulic flow). Oh, well, at least I now have a hose for watering the plants in my landscape, should I suddenly develop a passion for gardening and a boatload of patience (watering a single plant takes forever with the trickle that comes out of the hose).

The second use I came up with for the rain barrel was to source the water I use on my houseplants. Unlike my lawn and yard, my houseplants are cared for more or less faithfully, and as they continue to grow in number, I need increasingly large vessels to water all of them efficiently. For the past several months, I've been using my boyfriend's beloved VitaMix blender cup, as it's the largest easily poured container in the house, and it's always sitting conveniently on the counter.

However, the first time I used the rain-barrel water for my indoor plants, I realized I needed another container. As I watched the water flow out from the spigot labeled "non-potable," I realized I probably shouldn't be using a food preparation vessel to haul around water of questionable purity. Of course, I washed the blender cup thoroughly after that, but as if to remind me that the water from the rain barrel was just about as sketchy as water can be, my Norfolk Island Pine sprouted a magnificent garden of neon yellow fungus just a few days after watering.

That's not the kind of mushroom I want touching my kitchen equipment, so I vowed not to water the plants with the Vitamix any more.

But what to use, then? A sensible person would advise me to use a watering can, but I have never owned a watering can in my adult life, and I've never even run across one on Freecycle or at the thrift store. They must be the kind of thing that once you have, it's til death do you part. But my conscience (scientifically proven to be one part Extreme Cheapskate, one part Tree Hugger) wasn't really too keen on the idea of buying one new. Watering cans are outrageously expensive, apparently starting out at well over 10 dollars for a decent size. For something whose basic purpose is just to carry a couple liters of fluid, they seem exorbitantly priced compared to, say, a 2-liter bottle of soda, which can be less than a dollar in the right stores, and already comes with the fluid in it!

The compulsive crafter in me tried to devise a clever solution that I could construct from, say, a gallon milk bottle or one of the aforementioned 2-liters of soda, but ultimately, I decided I really wanted a watering can. I needed something with a spout that could get down to the base of my plants without spilling on the leaves (and thence to the floor, as such things go), that was sturdy enough not to collapse no matter what part of it I held onto, and that was graceful enough that I could maneuver it around my window fence without spilling or stabbing myself on a cactus. I needed an honest-to-goodness watering can, and I needed one now, before my plants dried out and I was forced to load up the Vitamix with fungus spores again. Finally, I acknowledged that, barring a miracle (perhaps a rain of watering cans instead of water?) I was going to need to pay money for this new necessity.

And this is when the other half of my conscience revved into action—the tree-hugging one. After reading a lot of recent news about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, I'm more depressed about the environment than ever, and, consequently, trying extra-hard to avoid buying new things made out of plastic. But sakes alive! All the steel watering cans out there are like 3 times the price of an equivalently sized plastic one...and the plastic ones are already exorbitantly priced, as I might have mentioned. I decided to search for a watering can made of recycled plastic, and I found one—one of the cheapest cans of its size, even, and made in the USA! Wow! Practically everything an ethical miser could ever want! I put it in my Amazon cart, and when I came back to make my purchase the next day, I found an even cheaper version of the same can! So, for 9.63$ (3 times as much as I'd originally hoped to have to pay, but less than I'd resigned myself to paying), I had a watering can of my very own.

When it arrived at my doorstep, I took it out of the box and was instantly worried because it looked smaller than the blender cup, and I'd really been hoping for an upgrade. But once I filled it with water, it became clear that looks are deceiving. It held as much as the Vitamix, and then some! I watered half my plants, did not stab myself with a cactus, and considered the whole endeavor a success. The can even makes an acceptable addition to my decor!

I usually like my stories to have a moral, but this one doesn't really, except perhaps to illustrate that even if you get a rain barrel for free, it's still going to cost you at least 25 dollars in new things that you didn't need before. However, if you are still looking for a more meaningful takeaway, let it be that if you're in the market for a botanical hydration vessel, perhaps you should consider this one.