Christmas 2010

Christmas time again. The last few years in Melbourne, we have been battling harsh droughts and therefore no rain. This Christmas, saw precipitation coming from our skies yet humidity and cloud cover. Boxing day is 19 degrees and we are faced with the realities of a Summer which may be wet and cool. Floods are in the north end of Australia; fire warning in the west and Melbourne looks like its going to have its usual "four-seasons-in one day" season. Our dams are more than half way. Over seas, its unseasonally cold in Europe. Seeing small villages in Ireland without water due to frozen pipes. Heathrow was shut the weeks before Christmas due to icy runways. In America, temperatures are down to -7.

Rain

I am not complaining about the rain. However, is it too much to ask for it to rain from 6pm to 4am? Enough time to get it out of it's system and then gardening folk can get on with their days! The farmers in the north don't want any more either. How awful. Five years of drought followed by a season of flooding! This is worse for the crops and soil than the drought. Hardly seems fair, does it? We work in the rain and it has to be really coming down for us not to work. At the beginning of the day, this seems to work, however by afternoon, we realise we are drowned rats anyway. Can one get any wetter? Might as well work! Everything sticks to you. The drains of the older houses are flooding and our equipment are getting ecstatic with the amount of white smoke they are blowing. I AM NOT COMPLAINING but...its very frustrating...certain things cannot be done in the rain. Ladder work, for example is a very bad idea in the rain. Mulching is another one. I have mulched in the rain and ended up looking like a chocolate covered peanut! Which isn't the look I was going for! The rain we are getting is not misty, its actually soil deepening rain. Which is good, but also means that everything is growing a lot faster. We were at a client's the other day and we had to mow the lawn three times. The entire lawns took three hours to complete! So we have the same allotted time in Spring as any other time and we work three times as hard, because as well as the lawns, there are overgrown hedges, dead-heading, mulching, WEEDING and the list goes on and on. It also been very balmy, which makes working in the rain so much better, because there is no cold factor. Very Queensland weather. However, as Melbourne does it, we're now going lower than 14 degrees in the night again, which is much better. Our dams are not past halfway and they have dropped the restrictions, forgetting about how quickly they can drain. Governments only think three years ahead. Not to the whole picture. It would really be nice if there was a politician out there who would see the big picture. Yes, I want dream land to turn into reality. I think I spoken about this before. Obviously, its something I care deeply about. Rain is water, but it won't last forever. If anything can be shown from the last few years, we know it dries up quickly.