Natural Perspectives:

It’s finally raining! I was beginning to doubt predictions that this was going to be an El Niño rainy season.

This weekend, I accompanied Vic on a field trip to the Sacramento and Stockton areas with his natural history class.

On Friday, we visited the San Luis Reservoir, a major water storage facility along the California Aqueduct. Water from the Bay-Delta is stored there until it is sent farther south to the farms and cities of Southern California, including Huntington Beach. It was both awesome and sobering to see how little water sat at the bottom of that giant hole in the ground.

On Saturday, we visited the Cosumnes River Preserve, a beautiful riparian natural area managed by a consortium of half a dozen public and private agencies. The tiny Cosumnes River has been set aside for protection because it is the only remaining undammed, free-flowing river on the west side of the Sierra Nevadas.

On Sunday, Vic and his students explored the San Luis and Merced National Wildlife Refuges. By noon, I was spending most of my time checking the weather on my Blackberry. The forecast was for ice and snow on the Grapevine. When the arrival time for the snow was changed from midnight to 5 p.m., Vic called a halt to the Sunday afternoon portion of the field trip to allow his students to drive home on Interstate 5 more safely.

The real rain didn’t start here until Monday. Vic’s Monday morning birding class got rained out, a rarity for his field trips. He was to meet his birding students at Bolsa Chica. Only four students showed up, with most opting to stay dry. They braved the elements for an hour, but soon the rain and wind forced Vic to call an early halt to a field trip for the second time in two days.

Vic reported that the parking lot at Harriett M. Wieder Regional Park had been paved with asphalt. It had previously been surfaced with gravel, which has the advantage of being permeable to allow rainwater to soak into the ground. Fortunately, runoff from the new asphalt will not be directed into the flood control system, but will find its way from the edge of the asphalt to the nearby soil without contributing to storm water pollution of the ocean.

While rain is bad for Vic’s field trips, our garden loves it. I finally got raised bed No. 3 installed, filled with compost and manure, and planted two weeks ago. I’m growing snow peas, red and yellow onions, lettuce, spinach, cauliflower and radishes in that bed.

I filled bed No. 2 with transplants two months ago. That bed is so pretty that I almost hate to pick the vegetables. These are square-foot garden beds, with each square foot holding a specific number of vegetables. After the first square of lettuce in bed No. 2 was harvested, I replaced the lettuce with garlic. I’m harvesting lettuce, chard and spinach from it regularly. My cauliflower heads are nearly large enough to harvest, and the savoy cabbage is heading up nicely.

Bed No. 1 still has bell peppers in it from summer. And they’re still producing bell peppers. We’ve never been able to grow decent bell peppers until this year. Now they’re growing like gangbusters, and are still setting fruit this late in the season.

I sprayed them with blossom set, a plant hormone, when they first flowered, and then again in the fall. That may be why we’re finally getting such good peppers after many years of failure. I’ve also planted some arugula and mizuna (Japanese mustard greens) in bed No. 1, but I still have a lot of empty squares to fill in that bed.

I love our new raised garden beds. They’re just the right size for our tiny yard. With the appearance of aged cedar, they look far more attractive than a garden set in the ground. And I like it that the boards are a recycled product of plastic and wood byproducts. I got the beds by mail order from Gardener’s Supply Co. ( www.gardeners.com), and assembly was pretty simple.

With the addition of that third bed, our backyard green makeover is nearly complete. Only a few things remain to be done. I reset our flagstone walkways in back and did some planting between the pavers, but still need to plant more.

The chicken coop is up, and I’ve added some outdoor art to the walls. (The wall hangings are for us to look at, not for the chickens.) I’ve added some security hardware to the door to the run and to the egg door, and have planted mums and narcissus around the coop. I even installed a solar voltaic LED floodlight on the coop.

I got the light from Gardener’s Supply Co. as well. We have our chicken-keeping permit from the city, but still don’t have the chickens. I want to put a final coat of paint on the coop before getting our hens.

Another work in progress is our new water-collection system. We had gutters and downspouts installed, but I still don’t have them connected to our one rain barrel (another product from Gardener’s Supply Co.).

For now, I’ve put a series of flexible polypropylene Tubtrugs (from where else? Gardener’s Supply Co.) under the eaves where there are no gutters. I’m also collecting rain runoff from the roof of the chicken coop and run. This collected water will be used on our garden in lieu of tap water.

New water restrictions are going into effect in Huntington Beach in January, so it’s time to think about how you can collect and store water for future yard use as well.

VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and environmentalists. They can be reached at LMurrayPhD@gmail.com.