We are experiencing the worse drought for decades. While water, liquid and frozen, is abound in the Northern Hemisphere, we here in the Southern Hemisphere (New Zealand, not all those states of Australia that are now experiencing downpours & storms) are looking out over brown fields and lawns, and dead and dying flower gardens (apart from the sneaks who in the dead of night are floughting the hose & sprinkler bans).
I am quite use to seeing brown dead grass, because our property was a roading depot in the 1920’s that housed the shingle and sand for all the roads that are the transport arteries around our region. I’m not sure why they had to gauge at least 8 metres from the top of the land, but I do know that they left behind three huge gravel mounds, leaving nothing but the subsoil and plates of rotten rock and sand. While there is no threat of ever having a flood here, it also means that when rainfall reduces, or stops completely for a couple of months as is the case now, we are left with conditions not too dissimilar to a desert.
Desert like conditions are fine for succulants, manuka (known as Tea Tree in Australia), and twitch grass (the evil of twitch will definitely be a blogging entry on its own in the near future but for now its drought), and geraniums (but even they are looking sad). But I am now witnessing my pittisporums drooping under the heat, the younger ones are actually browning.
“Get that hose out!!!” you may retort, but, we live in the country and rely on tank water, water we have captured from the roof of our house. ”Well just fill the tank when its empty!!!” I hear the tree lovers and gardeners shouting. This I would do – after all why go to work and not spend the hard earned wages on protecting the trees and plants that struggled to survive the near infertile arid free-draining sandy soil. Unfortunately the tanks that bring the liquid gold are bringing it from a town that is under threat of their reservoir drying up completely. Parks, equestrian centres (horse bathing), pools etc have all been told to restrict their water use. We are in a drought – and its not just us rural folk that are suffering this time.
My heart breaks that little bit more when I hear that the ’townies’ are’nt able to wash their 4 wheel drive land-rovers (which have never seen the terrain that they were designed for, and are used to zoom around supermarket carparks and drop children off at school not more than 5 km from home), and that their pristine handkerchief sized lawns, (laid at the cost of feed for a 100 head of cows), is browning and as we speak devalueing the price of their property. I am also saddened that they are now having to restrict the refilling of their spa pools, and instead - resort to placing a damp flannel to the back of their necks and wrists to cool off after the hard day in the airconditioned office.
Since we went feral (sorry I mean rural) 11 years ago we have learned a healthy respect for our water. God giveth, and God may one day decide not to turn the universal sprinkler on – for months, and we end up as dry as an AA meeting. Long gone are the days when we would leave the tap running while we brushed our teeth; flushed the toilet no matter what went in it; washed outside of house every couple of months because it was a nice thing to do in the summer to keep cool; wash the car every other weekend; leave the sprinkler on the garden all night for several nights because the fuschia’s, lettuces and tomatoes are sagging; do the laundry every day – full load or not; do the dishes everytime a piece of crockery appeared on the bench. You got the picture?
While we could carry on doing all those townie things, we would pay the price – literally. To have a tanker of water come and fill our tank up is quite a costly expense. Nice if your a media mogel or you have a child celebrity living with you that has’nt spent all their money on drugs or tattooes. For the rest of us, the average family, this unexpected expense is not one to encourage. So, here we are in a drought.
Spring had not been a long wet season, which in our region is then followed by a long wet introduction to summer. The population of the North Island of New Zealand has spent quite a few years bemoaning the lateness of summer (summer doesnt really come late – it arrives on time but generally the initial two months are damp). Many opine their younger days of long hot summers at the beach or camping etc. Now, every conversation is about the absence of rain, or rain that appeared in one part of the region or town, but not the other. While rain conversations are not my normal staple conversation diet, I was absolutely miffed that it rained in town, heavily whats more – on a carpark! There were huge puddles where I park my cark. Was this a cruel joke from the heavens, or had someone spent hours hosing the agapantha’s dotted all around the carpark? What is the point of raining on a darn carpark??? But I’m over that now.
I have never been in a region that experinced drought. I lived in Auckland in the early 90’s and there was low rainfall and reservoirs got dangerously low – to the point that media were speculating that people would have to go to fire-hydrants to fill up containers for domestic use. Grass was still green, the vast majority of the population begrudgingly turned off their sprinklers and allowed dust to settle on their cars without having to hose it off. But it was scary because I had just had a baby and I was worried out water for washing nappies (yes, I used cloth nappies!!!!).
What is a wee bit like the devil expelling flatulance in my face is that we had been cautious with our water because the spring was not as wet as it normally is, and spring rain fell but only in Spring. When summer started, it really started – no late Spring rains in Summer!At the same time we received notification that the long awaited Council approval (Council fees and Council rates will most definitely be the topic of a future blog!!! – probably under the title “Complete and utter rip-offs – Council laughs all the way to the bank” or something along those lines.
Any way the garage/sleepout building consent came through the same time as the drought began to be referred to as an official ‘drought’. The garage is being built on concrete, and concrete does not come ready made – it requires the mixing with water, and hosing on a regular basis to cure the concrete so it doesnt crack in the future. So I asked the builders if science had come up with an alternative to all that water needed for the hosing – yes!!!!! They put black polythene over the newly poured concrete, so the concrete would ’sweat’ dampening itself while it dried out. Hooray cried the villagers (well me and the hubby actually).
Sadly, (there is always a sadly in best laid plans, sort of the “Murphy’s Law Number 1028), on or about 9.30am when the concrete was poured, the lads did need the hose to smooth over the newly poured concrete. The next day, on or about 6.30am after I had left for work, hubby rings me (he was dropping daughter off so was the traumatised witness to the event) and asks if I had used the hose before I left. My answer was no, which meant AHA !!! the concrete smoothing bloke had forgotten to turn the tap off about 23 hours beforehand, and we did not notice the constant groaning of the pump.
We ended up with enough water to flush the toilet for what us Southern Hemisphere people refer to as “Number Two’s”, and a few pots of tea.
I have spent the last few days researching how to use grey/gray water, the waste water from the house, so we can try to resusitate the trees and keep the silverbeet and tomatoes alive until we can eat the rest. Whooooah!! Before there is readers dashing to the Council or Health dept, we do not intend to drink, bath or consume in any way this recycled water, nor bath the dogs in it. It is only the laundry water, and it is only going on trees. We have no intention of bottling it and selling it to townies! And we most definitely will not wash our car with it, because then we will be readily and mistakenly identified as townies and posers.
We spent this afternoon working out how much water comes out of a washing machine, in earlier days it was about 3 rooms across the floor if you left the plug in the laundry sink. Nowadays there is modern out pipes that discharge it magically through the floor. I have flexi polythene piping, two 72 litre bins to catch it in, and hubby will be standing by the ‘pause’ button in case our bins are too small, then we will madly dash for more buckets, all in the line of saving the life of a poor tree.
Trees a cleaning our air for us people, not to mention they are really courageous surviving in our property with all the heat from the sand, stone and nothing to retain water at their roots. I suppose its a wee glimmer of those doctors dashing around an ER??
Here’s another thought: the absence of water is making us all gray/grey. Especially the poor farmers who are having to sell of their stock because they cant afford to feed them, and those that rely on milking to bring in the bacon - I mean money, the diary farmers have had to dry off cows way too early. I also heard that lots of rural folk have found their water bores are drying up, no rain falling on the earth, means no water under the earth.
So my fellow/ess’s bloggers, think before you leave that tap going. And just appreciate the fact that water is still coming out of the taps.
