This is what I love to see

Water flowing into the tanks.

Water in the tanks

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Terrible Result

After the terrible result from the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. The Aust Youth Climate Coalition have put together this message.

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Brrr Cold it is

After the dust clouds came through last week (more on that below). How cold did it get. Yass temps for the weekend were

• Sat 4-10
• Sun 3-7.8 (icy winds blowing from the mountains as well)
• Mon 3.2-11.9 (and very little wind)

On the dust storm, I missed the first one in Yass (caught it while in Sydney). Anyway as you may be aware, we drink the water from out tank and up until now that has been fine. But since the dust storm the water is a bit murky (and even a new filter does not help). Do people know if I just have to wait for the fine dust to settle in the tank (will it settle) before it becomes clean again? Or is there something else I should be doing?

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Rain Gauge

After 18 months and good rainfall the last two weeks of April (90 mls for the month)  I decided to get a water gauge, and obviously to record how much rain we do receive her at One Green Acre. I plan to store this info in an online Google spreadsheet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Docs). Hopefully I will discover how to embed a spreadsheet here into the website.

Our location is higher than the actual main street of town, and sometimes it can be wet down there (only 2kms away, if that) and not a drop here, so there is probably differences in the rainfall that is recorded by the BOM. The location of mine is in the vege patch away from any trees and houses.

Of course the day we bought the rain gauge, the rain was ending and since then there has been nothing in it, not a single drop.

Rain Gauge

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Heat

While we have not been struck with some of the temps of SA or Vic, we have been quite hot here – and the veges have been taking a beating.

So the temps here have been

• Thurs 29 Jan -38
• Fri 30 Jan – 38.2
• Sat 31 Jan – 38.6
• Sun 1 Feb – 35 (and how it felt so much cooler, seriously)
• Mon 2 Feb – 36
• Tues 3 Feb – 36
• Wed 4 Feb – 35
• Thurs 5 Feb – 38.5
• Fri 6 Feb – 39

Expected today Sat 7 – 40 and the same for Sunday – we will see what happens. While our house is insulated and the eaves do their part, the house still heats up. And as this block was a ‘blank’ canvas there are no mature trees, near the house. As you would see in previous posts I am building a deck, this will one day hold the grape vines providing shade in summer. And some of the plants that we have planted around the house will also provide more shade, but that is years away. Anyway two more days and then hopefully a cool change and maybe some rain.

Posted in Building, Climate change, Yass | No Comments »

Plastic Shopping Bags

With all the pieces in the press about plastic bags recently in the pressI have decided I must write about it. My issue is I don’t get it. Why can’t people stop using them? And why do they kick up a fuss when people start talking about a fee applied to them?

Prior to moving to Yass I lived in the inner Sydney suburb of St Peters and the closest shopping centre was Marrickville Metro, I guess the type of shopper was one that is environmentally aware and I would guess that 40% of people bought their own reusable bags. Here in Yass I have noticed that it is different and that when we are in either Woolworths or Franklins that we are usually the only people using reusable bags. Is it that country people don’t really care about the damage that bags do? Or is that they are just not aware of the issues?

As I look out my sliding door while I write this piece, I don’t notice the pollution as much as in Sydney, I don’t see the plastic bags blowing around in the street – is this the reason?

While on this subject and if there are people reading saying “I reuse my shopping bag, I use it as a bin liner” or “I could not survive without my plastic shopping bags” here are a few pointers on how I go about a full life without shopping bags.

1. Use canvas recyclable bags, I have approx 24 bags in a central place at home that we grab when we go shopping, even if we are just going into a small store we usually have at least one with us, just in case.
2. Place some boxes in the boot of your car then you can wheel the supermarket trolley to your car and place the items in the boxes.
3. Separating your waste at home – recycling in the recycling box, green waste in the compost/worm farm, and food scraps etc in a few layers of newspaper, placed in the bin – see no bin liner needed.

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Tanks are full

So the tanks are full, all of yesterday (and overnite) just a constant drizzle. So this backs up the 20 mm that we received on Thursday. It is good being on tank water as you can use the water how you like eg I can water the garden every day if I want.

What I find funny about water restrictions is that while they say people cannot water their garden each day, you can still waste water with a dishwasher or long showers, but water a vege/fruit producing garden everyday from town water and you’d be in trouble, something not right there. Also the Yass town water does taste fairly average, very calcium rich don’t recommend it

Anyway the reason for the post is that last nite my daughter went outside on on the decking and there she found a small frog, I ran to get the camera but no battery power. A frog, we could not believe it

Posted in Animals, Climate change, Gardening | 2 Comments »