Rain, Rain, Beautiful Rain!

Lovely soaking rain fell over the weekend, everything feels fresh and lush. Although this may not be unusual for certain areas, here in the Wimmera it has been a very poor season. We have been facing drought conditions and record breaking high temperatures. Farmers have had to face crop failures due to lack of rain. There will be no need to water over the coming days, but it has made me contemplate how the introduction of water restrictions would impact on my own garden. Since the end of a previous 12 year drought in 2010 I have made a lot of changes to my garden and put in a lot more fruit and citrus trees. As they are not yet fully established, they take a reasonable amount of water. Quickly forgotten were all the buckets that I carried trying to keep it all alive over the severe restriction that were in place at the time. Now I look around and wonder if I would have the energy for that now. I still use the grey water from my washing machine on 5 orange trees that I have planted down the side of the house in an old rose garden. But my new green machine uses so little water I am afraid that I would not be able to keep anything else going with the water. It is not yet doom and gloom but in the back of my mind I feel that I should maybe stop planting out so many new gardens.

The garden is very productive at the moment we have potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants. capsicums, grapes and satsuma plums to eat. We are sharing the grapes with the birds but the pergola is laden and there is enough for everyone.