Reticently Released Into Winter's Approach

Laziness, perhaps, or wider distraction.  I could, of course, have just been lulled into complacency by the protracted mildness of the weather.  There have been cold snaps, to be sure, and yet this final day of November finds me once again coat-free -- with a string of duplicates still predicted.  Whatever the explanation, I still have not completed the winterization of the farm.  The tools are largely organized and stored.  The garden is officially put to bed, though the deer are claiming their biblical entitlement to any residual gleanings.  More than a few have arced the fence -- some clearing the clothesline strung above the fence while others show off their precision with an airborne limbo through the foot-wide space between the fence and line.  Finding one of the metal posts bent almost horizontal I wince vicariously at the thought of some poor deer's scarred undercarriage.

It's the rain barrels that are delaying me.  Two in the back near the garden; two in the front near the greenhouse.  All four have acquitted themselves well; fall rains have filled them to capacity.  They can't stay that way.  The barrels need to be emptied and brought into the barn for protection from freezing.  They are plastic, after all -- heavy and durable, but vulnerable nonetheless.  Greenhouse seedlings will need a great deal of the water through the winter and I have been filling as many gallon jugs as will fit, along with three plastic garbage barrels now swollen and lidded.  Perhaps 130 gallons of rainwater are safely gathered in.  Though the front two barrels are greatly diminished, they aren't yet empty; and the back two barrels are still holding their own.  One thing is certain:  it doesn't pay to try and move them with even a little water remaining.

Of course I can just open the faucet and let the water drain out, and ultimately some of that will be necessary.  But I'm nagged by the stewardship of it.  It feels like waste to simply have it trickle into oblivion.  There is, I am aware, something irrational in that view.  "Trickling away" is precisely what the rain intended those drops to do.  I can't shake the sense, however, that it's somehow akin to letting lettuce rot in the crisper.  It seems brazenly profligate -- especially given the volumes of rural water we purchased through the drought of summer and desperately hosed onto the thirsty plants.

Perhaps in light of that drought-stricken memory -- and having filled every container and available space -- perhaps draining the barrels into the cracks of the rain's intended destination is stewardship of a different kind.

Only briefly -- and with the best of intentions -- delayed.