Hydrophobia

The numbers are in, and New York City officially just saw it’s driest October in 150 years. We are on drought watch, when plants should be conserving energy and peacefully going to sleep, they might just faint without changing color.

If you have tried to water a garden here recently, you probably saw water pooling on the surface and running off to lower areas without absorbing. That’s because the microbe biofilm on the upper particles has coated itself in a waxy substance due to lack of water, called hydrophobic soil. It’s a defense mechanism, but makes life hard on the plants, not to mention the gardeners. Water is truly a miracle – the characteristics and polarity of the molecule have given rise to every single organism we have ever observed. It’s a universal solvent. I really hope we get some more soon, but the sky is awfully blue!