It’s been showering with rain for the last two days, our garden receiving 34.5mm, 25mm on Tuesday and 9.5mm yesterday. That’s 4,950 litres of water in our 21,000 litre tank – about a week to a week and a half’s worth of water for household use.

Enough not to need to water the garden for three or four days, so the recycled water has been used to water:

1. the fruit trees, yams, pineapples;
2. the sweet potatoes and the spice border (neither have been watered since August);
3. a fresh bed of sweet potato cuttings inserted yesterday in the very warm, moist soil; and 4. I expect to have enough recycled water to water the recently transplanted cardamom today.

With even the compacted soil in the nature strip facing our house being slightly moist I can plant another three street trees and take some cuttings of drought-tolerant perennials for the front garden.

None of this means that water-saving initiatives listed on 24.12.06 can be forgotten – just deferred until we see what January is like.

As ABC News On Line said yesterday Brisbane received about 25mm on Tuesday, far short of what is required to generate any runoff into dam catchments, but local gardeners must be buoyed by the relief it’s brought.

Jerry Coleby-Williams