Wet. Well, wet-ish.

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You have to admire the irony of it: I put in 4 water tanks and we have the wettest winter in 10 years.

The media has made a great run on it. The drought has broken!

The state government, with an election in November, has made a great run on it and eased water restrictions. Mind you, they are being very quiet about the desalination plant they are building.

But how about a few other facts:

1. The dams are only 42% full. Better than last yet to be sure but they haven't been 100% full since 1997.

2. Best winter rains in 10 years but in the last 155 years this winter rates as only the 60th wettest.

3. And, looking at the year to date, there were 115 out of 155 years that were wetter at the end of winter.

4. Having trained people to be careful with water, what message is being sent by easing restrictions?

5. The price of water has gone up 25% a year for the last two years. Could be some hefty bills in store for people who go 'open slather' with their water.

But my tanks are full and the garden is wet. That can't be a bad thing.

Oh, and it took 11 tries to get that photo.

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Tanks? You're welcome.

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Just to show my absence from blogging was not all sitting around with my feet up. I have put in four water tanks. The one above, 2000 litres, sits snugly behind the Manchurian Pears. It is also linked to a tall narrow tank up the side of the house by a pipe under the house. The small tank doesn't hold much on its own but the two tanks equilibrate and it means I can harvest a good downpipe that is around there.


This one, 1000 litres, is in the front garden.

There is a fourth in the vegetable garden.

We are slowly moving to make things a little more sustainable.

Tomorrow I will show you how to build a vegetable garden out of ink-jet cartridges.
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Second sip from the bottle...

People are getting the wrong idea. When I said that for every five litres of water you consume you consume one litre of crude oil I wasn't meaning that you physically drink the crude oil.

What is the bottle made out of? Crude oil.

What powers the vehicles that ship the water around the planet? Crude oil.

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People seem to forget that we use crude oil for far more than just running our cars.

All our plastics are made from crude oil. As are our paints, resins, pigments, synthetic fibres (nylon, polyester etc), most pharmaceuticals, many building products and laminates, glues & adhesives, pesticides, asphalt and rubber.
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More than one year...

I was accused of taking one year, admittedly the worst on record, and extrapolating rashly.

The above is the rainfall chart for the last three years. Still not pretty.

Today there was a conference regarding the rising levels of suicide and depression in Australian farmers. It takes more than one year of bad weather to break a farmer's spirit.

The picture above is of Lake Wendouree in central Victoria. It didn't get to that state in one year.

The chart above is the level of water in Melbourne's catchments. For some years rainfall met demand but there was not sufficient to actually build reserves. As of this morning's papers our catchments are at 29.3% of capacity. It takes more than one year for that to happen. (The Thompson Reservoir, the reservoir that would 'drought proof' Melbourne is at 17.5% capacity.)

There is talk of ceasing to provide irrigation water to the farmers of the Murray-Darling basin. That situation does not happen after just one year.

So...does this point the finger at climate change? Or is it just one of those 'things'? A pigeon in the turbine of life? Or ostrich, perhaps. We certainly have plenty of sand.

I am told that it is the height of hubris to think that humans could effect climate change.

It is the height of stupidity to think we couldn't.

We effect climate change on the small scale every day - heating and cooling our little pieces of a local climate in houses and cars. We build our lives around modifying our environments.

Why is it that some people think that we and our actions cannot impact on the larger environment? The arguments seem to be either that it is so big that nothing we do will have an impact or than any impact we have is out of all proportion to the natural cycles.

If the people concerned about the environment are showing the height of hubris, the people who think they can chuck any crap they like into the environment and not stuff it up for everyone else are showing far too much humility for my liking.
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(gasp!) Water! Water!

OK, things are not as dry as that photo would suggest but they are dry. But in a cold, autumny sense at the moment.

Today we reached the dubious milestone of the driest one year period on record.

The rain fall for the last year was:


The blue is the average rainfall for each month (mm). (Remember that it is a fair expectation for things to fall above average half the time.)

But of course it cannot be due to global warming. George said it wasn't and that was good enough for Johnny.

If it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck

but doesn't have any water to swim in, is it still a duck?
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Forlorn hope?

I enjoy growing my own vegetables. It is not enough to be self-sufficient but there is a lot of satisfaction in it. To be cooking dinner and go out to the garden and grab a handful of fresh herbs gives me some sort of sense of participation in the world.

Of course there is the small matter of planting and weeding but weeding has diminished since I took mulching to heart. Mind you, since mulching became serious (due to a general lack of water and water restrictions that say you can only hand water and only between 6am and 8am Wednesdays and Sundays) there have not been as many return plant visits - the annual reappearance of parsley and silverbeet from previous years dropped seeds has pretty much stopped.

Over recent years I have tried growing cabbage, with mixed success. They are prone to mildew, aphids and cabbage moth grubs. Last week, full of hope, I planted some cabbage seedlings. Savoys, those nice crinkly ones, and some red cabbage.

Before I had finished planting in the first punnet of seedlings, there were cabbage moths fluttering around the already planted ones. How do the know? Where do they come from? The neighbours don't grow vegetables. Do the moths hang out in the crab apple tree just waiting for me to plant cabbages? Grrr. Maybe I'll buy me a butterfly net. OK, moth net.

On to the internet: GOOGLE: "how to handle cabbage moths". Found a warm and fuzzy 'organic' site that suggested that the environmentally responsible way to handle cabbage moths is to spread broken egg shells around the cabbage seedlings and the short sighted and seriously territorial moths will say "Uh-oh, this is someone else's plot, better move on. Sorry to bother you ladies!"

I think the organic folk have been smoking their cabbage leaves.

My moths would look at the eggshells and say "Look! An airport!"
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Just a Wii problem.

I knew too much water was bad for you but I thought it meant you drowned.

Apparently you can actually drink too much water and get something called water intoxication.

The other day a contestant in a competition to win a Nintendi Wii game died after, as part of the competition, drinking a large quantity of water. Last one left standing won the game. The reports don't say whether she won or not.

Who thinks up these competitions?

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