20 July 2012

Cracking up


The fallen green leaves, brown straggly grass and deep cracks in the soil here probably tell you all you need to know about the current state of our water levels. The poor plants in the pumpkin patch are showing the stress, too:


Every time thunderstorms have been forecast in the last two weeks we've missed out on them. In July so far we've only had one day with any rain - Saturday the 7th, when we got around 5mm. In an average July we should get around 50mm. In the two weeks since that rain we've watched as the grass has turned brown and crispy, the vegetables in the barnyard have slowly been dying and the trees have been shedding their leaves. Trucks carrying drinking water are a regular sight along the roads again as people's wells run dry.

The next chance of rain is on Monday, according to the weather forecast, but even then it is only a 50% chance of thundershowers and those are notoriously fickle and localised. I'm keeping the greenhouse plants going using the rejected water from our domestic system, but if there isn't rain soon I won't be able to keep doing that, as we'll need to recycle that back into the cistern for our own use.

I know I complain about lack of water every summer but this one does seem particularly bad...

1 comment:

Lisa from Iroquois said...

I'm just down the highway from you. We've had 3, maybe 4 - 15 minute downpours since the first of June. It is just barely enough to keep the garden growing but everything is smaller and coming to early. Just finished processing the broccoli for the freezer.