Storm today

Ps I was smart enough to grab the camera and mumpad had to go out in the rain and collect the hailstones cause I had the camera.

Thanks mumpad.

You've got rain, dadpad?
Terrific!
Hooray!
More, more!

Is it still hot, though?

This morning, walking around the Maribyrnong River in Essendon, my friend & I where almost blown over crossing an elevated bridge! Whaaaa? That wind was bloody fierce! (Still is!)

We may be in for some more wind then Olga. Its all died right back to nothing now.

Sun shining, birds chirping.

Better some rain than no rain.

Absolutely!

During the past week I've noticed that mid-summer bleached, dried out look on some of my garden plants already! And it's only late October!
And my "lawn" (haha!) is as hard as concrete! It's the bloody relentless wind! Dries everything out in a single day,even after a fair recent soak, if it's ferocious enough!

Onwards with the grey water & all those buckets outside my backdoor! Sigh. It's going to be a long, long, loooooooooooooong summer!

Good luck with your plantings, dapad! Keep posting pictures showing their progress.

How do you collect grey water Olga? Does your house plumbing have a dual system?

Many water conscious households have had to modify plumbing systems to provide water for gardens because of the drought and water restrictions. Ours is a simple redirect on the exit line from the laundry just prior to entering the main houshold sewer line. We'd like to do the same with the bathroom but the sub floor is very difficult to access.

There would be as many variations on grey water systems as there are housholds I suspect. Some as fancy as an underground tank with a pump to reclaim the water and garden distribution system some as simple as a bucket for the bathwater. Black water of course is not reclaimed and kitchen water is not recommended as reclaimable.
Friends of ours on tank water were using water 4 times last summer. 1. normal kitchen, or bathroom, 2. bucket this used water into the laundry for washing clothes. 3 bucket into toilet cistern for flushing. 4 pumping the water off the top of the septic onto the garden.

Ive always wanted to put in a grey water system for the veggie garden.No toilets or kitchen . We have bath, shower sinks and laundry connectted by a series of Y connections and All I need is some kind of a collection point and a pump.

Maybe tomorrow, todays got too much fooball on the tube.

The big problem is the collection point. most houses these days are to low to the ground. Sink a 44gal drum into the ground and pump out of that.

The water in the "collection point" can go off. Pump out every 24 hours. One thing a sytem like that does is makes you realise just how much water you do use. And make it a drip system rather than sprays contaminated water sprayed onto fruits and vegetables could be nasty.

That's some pretty impressive hailstones. They were so round I found myself wanting to play marbles with them.

Wish I could afford a rainwater tank & pump

If only, farmerman!

I collect my grey water likes heaps of other people do, by the bucketful! There's a row of six buckets just outside my backdoor which are constantly being filled (then used on the garden plants) from my sinks, washingmachine & shower/bath. Every single sink & basin has a container permanently sitting there to catch every bit of "excess" water, which is then transferred to the buckets. It's a very labour-intensive process!
I wish I had the funds for a system to make the job easier & more efficient, but I don't. Still, this is far better than hosing precious water onto the garden. (We have watering restrictions in Melbourne which should actually be a lot more stringent, given the depleted levels of our water catchments.)
Recently physiotherapists identified a new ailment, brought about by in our drought-stricken predicament: "bucket back". From carrying all those buckets of water around our gardens. I don't have it yet, but stick around! :wink: