I made two mosaics of my garden, neither tells the full story but together they give you an idea.
Ballarat is on Stage 4 water restrictions and has been for a long time. This means No garden watering at all EVER ! No car washing except for windscreens and headlights and it must be done with a bucket-not the garden hose.
1. The bucket in the wheel barrow - when it is full of water it is too heavy to lift so we wheel it out the back gate, round the corner and in the front gate to water the front yard. Every load of washing fills this large toy barrell twice (no matter what setting the machine is on). Gone are the days of popping on the washing and heading out. We then wheel it around and bucket it out. The soapier load onto the tough plants and the rinse load on the fragile ones.
2. Ahh, this is gorgeous. This is the washing machine hose coming out of the dryer vent
3. washing machine hose into bucket
4. Empty Terracotta pots - no more pretty flowers, we would rather keep the trees alive
5. Cobwebs on the hose. We are not allowed to use it at all.
6. Rain gauge - ha, haven't had to use that for a while.
7. Hose in the front yard - this hose carries all the shower / bath water (not that anyone has had a bath in looong time) to the front yard. Thats the lawn (ha) it is lying on.
8. Water container, used to collect water in the kitchen, when the water is running waiting to warm up.
9. This is where the dryer used to hang, and that's the hose going out the vent. Long complicated insurance type story there. You cannot have a window permanently open to accomodate this sort of thing or it voids your house insurance????? So we just pop it out the vent. Home beautiful or what?
10. The diverter from the shower / bath pipes so the water drips eventually into the front garden. Of course going from a big pipe into a tiny hose means almost no drainage, so the bath can take an hour to empty, leaving behind every tiny speck of dirt. ( we haven't used the bath for 6months or more)
11. Hose from diverter into front yard
12. Aha, this one didn't like washing machine water
13. Nor did his friend
14. More dead stuff
15. Thermometer
So at the moment my garden grows in spite of the heat and the drought and because we have become very very careful with our water.
and this is Barry, he holds 5,000 litres of water, he is about up to the second-from-bottom rung at the moment. 
Just waiting for some rain...........
Wish I was able to set one up in my house.
ReplyDeleteI'll send the rain gods to you.
We got 44mm yesterday. I can hear the lawn growing.
and we are sitting inside while outside mist and rain drifts ...
ReplyDeletehow bizarre Australia is really.
It takes so much work to try and keep the garden going with such severe water restrictions.
ReplyDeleteWe are lucky we have Stage 3A so we get to water for 2 hours twice a week if we want to. Mind you I still bucket the water around anyway and try not to have to use any other water.
Alison
Jodie, you should have called your water tank Phil. As in Phil the tank. Get it!
ReplyDeleteLove David xxxxxxxx
(David typed this in and then it didn't go so I had to do the stupid thing Mel x )
My parents had a similar set up in Denver the years of their drought. After the water from the washer drained into a large barrel he used a sump pump to pump it out through a hose into the garden. Luckily his barrel would hold all the water from one load so you could leave.
ReplyDeleteI'll stop moaning about the flash floods now and thank my lucky stars I don't have to go through all of that hoo-ha every time I turn on the tap! And us Brits moan about an occasional hose pipe ban (of course, us Brits moan about every blooming thing, including moaning itself. It's the British way!!!)
ReplyDeleteI heard a rumour though that the lake had a bit of water back in the middle. Is it true or has the Summer sun eaten it all up?
ReplyDeleteI didn't realise you weren't allowed to water using your garden hose at all! We can water on Sundays between 6-9am or 5-8pm. But we use a lot of rainwater from our tank and the washing water too. We even put the cooking water on the garden!We need another tank(though it would be standing empty now!) Your garden still looks lovely :)
ReplyDeleteJodie, you're doing a great job with your water, and I just LOVE Barry. I did like the suggestion of Phil however
ReplyDeleteSo pleased to see the second mosaic of gorgeous colour, after the effort you guys are going through with saving water. Is that hydrangea I see? They can be fairly tough in the right spot, but ours does need water (from washing machine) at the moment. Is there also a Just Joey rose too?
ReplyDeleteThanks too for the nice words re quilt and kissy photos - we plan to go out to the city, see a show, drink a bit, eat a bit and kiss alot!
I hope it rains there real soon, and lots. I love Barry. The photos are amazing. The pictures of your flowers are stunning, your water saving efforts are great to get such results.
ReplyDeleteoh we need a barry over this way! I can't believe how dry melbourne is and that the lawn is all dead grass
ReplyDeletebring on the rain!
Corrie:)
Gah..you can have my rain!! It's so soggy here in Sydney that I have molding laundry, and few clean clothes! :ventventvent:
ReplyDeleteWe used to do the laundry water barrel thing when I lived in California during the drought there, too. We were very creative with our water conservation, lol.
I was watching a movie last night and the guy turned the shower on and JUST LET IT RUN while he had a romantic scene with the girl and I was in agony, watching the waste! You do get very used to water restrictions.
ReplyDeleteYour water management is so impressive as are the pretty flowers.
We can still water 2 days/week here as well. Everything still manages to look a healthy shade of yellow-brown though. It's been weird weather at the moment, drove down south last week thinking it would be sunny (hello, middle of summer!) and we got two days of rain. Pretty flower mosaic. I wish we could be as water efficient as you are.
ReplyDeletexx Cat.
I didn't realise it was that bad in VIC!!!! It's great to see that you're doing every little bit that you can to recycle what water you do use to keep some life in your garden... Keep up the great work Jodie...
ReplyDeleteJodie