Saturday 20 January 2007

Carrying on like a wet hen.


No, not autum leaves, rain!

In the last two days we have had 10mm here. Not much maybe, the January average is 47mm, but a darned sight better than things were a few days ago.

Things have been pretty grim, water-wise, the last six months and the garden is showing the strain. I have a system in place for collecting shower water, a separate system for collecting rain water (but, of course, that needs rain) and a third system that catches the washing machine water from the laundry, having recently switched to a garden friendly powder. The shower water goes on the flower garden, the laundry water on the vegetables and the rain water goes wherever needed.

Watch this spot for reports of 'bucket back'.

But yesterday and today we got rain. So what was I doing? Bucketing water out of the collection systems onto the garden. How deep down will 10mm of rain go? Probably about 30mm, allowing for interstitial spaces in the soil. Not far really. So bucketing on top of the rain should get water deeper into the garden. Then it is up to the mulch to keep it there.

But they predict storms with up to 50mm tonight! Well, I would prefer ten nights of 5mm but let's wait and see what we get.

After all, the weather bureau is a non-prophet organisation.
...

11 comments:

  1. Hehehe, cute cartoon :o)
    We had 25mm today, and hopefully we'll match it overnight....same forcast tomorrow. Its wonderful not to have the stinging heat taken out of the air :o)

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  2. non-prophet! hahahahahahaha!

    i admit
    that i love puns
    not the corny,
    but the clever ones!

    yours definitely fall into the latter catagory, lee

    and as i work for a water company, high praise for your conservation and reuse efforts!!! hope you continue to get liquid sunshine in the right dosages.

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  3. Let's hope that rain lingers longer, Lee...it's so badly needed. The dams up this way are becoming bone-dry, too, though where I live we're okay. We depend on our own water supplies up here on the mountain, plus this property has a bore. Beautiful water it is, too. But, one can take only so many slices out of the cake, that applies to water as well. Rain is need to keep the aquifer flowing. Luckily, there is much underground water here. We've been getting rain on and off. All tanks are full. When the tanks on this property get low, on goes the bore. The majority of the rest of south-east Queensland, however, is in dire straits. Brisbane currently is on Stage 4 water restrictions and soon will be on Stage 5. It's frightening...but a lot of the problems in south-east Qld have been caused by short-sightedness, too. A massive increase in population, new building/home estates and all that goes along with the increases.

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  4. Here we have to even perform special prayer asking God not to give us so much rain. Our southern state of Johor had been having the worst flood in the last 100 years since December..school fails to start..properties and livestock damaged..diseases start to attack..looting uncontrolled. We hardly listen to weather forecast before since it's all rain and sunshine.. but this time people are really watching. They say rain will continue till March there.

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  5. Please send some to WA, we are dry dry dry!!!

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  6. non - prophet organisation...
    Great line.

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  7. A non PROPHET organzation, that is clever Lee!! Very!!

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  8. I so admire the way you get the most benefit from the water you've got. If only more people were as conscious of how wasteful they are.

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  9. Well, shoot. Now that sounds like I'm saying you're wasteful, and I'm not at all. Damn grammar.

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  10. Hope you got the desired rainfall

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  11. Got some rain, not as much as promised. Have since swapped to a garden friendly detergent and built a system to catch all the washing machine water.

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