We have been going through a very dry time recently, with the onset of the summer heat and reports confirming that we are entering another el-nino period.

All a bit glum really, but then the rains finally came. We had about 150mm. that’s about 6 inches in the old money. I had recently spent a few days pumping water from one almost empty dam up to another, slowly accumulating what was left of our water in the 4 dams, all eventually up to the one small dam near the house, where we have both a high pressure, petrol driven, fire fighting pump, and a small electric pump that is mostly used for watering the garden.

I managed to get that little dam about 1/4 to 1/3rd full. not a bad effort. That would have been just enough to see us through the first half of summer.

Before the rains.

After the rain.

But now, since the down pour, we have 4 dams all about 3/4 full. The little house dam that started from 1/3rd full, over flowed down into the next dam in the series. A lot of that water I pushed up hill 2 weeks ago flowed back. A waste of a couple of gallons of petrol. I still buy petrol for the pumps, the chain saws, the mowers and diesel for the tractor. So we are not fully weaned off the dirty oil economy. I worked out recently that I spend a little bit more money on the fuel for the mowers and chain saws, than I do putting petrol in our Plug-in hybrid car, simply because we make sure that we keep the car fully charged off our solar panels, so we rarely ever need to put petrol in it. About $30 every 3 months, where as I spend about $100 twice a year filling up the fuel drums for the garden appliances.

We have recently bought a solar charged electric push mower, plus a whipper-snipper thingy, and a solar charged electric chain saw. So I expect that my visits to the petrol station will decrease accordingly. I still need diesel for the tractor and petrol for the ride on mower.

Since the weekend workshops of the last two weekends, Janine and I have spent a good part of each day during the week in the pottery consolidating our sgraffito skills and developing a few new designs, to include in our next batch of work. I would have liked to spend more time in the pottery, being creative and self absorbed. Once you start to draw and decorate the surface, the time just flashes past and it gets late so early. We  have to stop to do the watering. There will be more time tomorrow to get a bit more done. There is always enough time for everything. We just have to learn to allocate out time and and as we age to allocate our limited energy. 

There is so much to do around the garden and orchards. We have had to start watering by hand again since the rains stopped and the temperature has been going up – just touching on 40 degrees today. Even hotter in the west. Hand watering all the gardens and orchard trees. It takes us both over an hour to do a quick once-over, just to keep everything alive. It takes a lot longer to give specific beds a really good soak while we are at it.

We could probably buy vegetables much cheaper from one of the rip-off, price gouging supermarkets. But they wouldn’t so clean, fresh, healthy, organic and immediately delivered straight from the garden and onto the plate. There is something so very, even intensely, powerful in growing your own food. Not just the self reliance of it, but the intimate nature of the activity. It grounds me here in this place. I’m intimately here and now on this ground. This has become my little all-encompassing environment. My statement of belonging. I’ve sculptured this place into being as what is is now. It’s peaceful, abundant, pretty, and very functional as a home art space and garden.

We are just coming to the end of ‘the hungry gap’. That time of the year when most of the winter food in the garden is coming to an end, but the new spring planted summer crops haven’t started producing yet. We have been eating the last of our carrots, beetroots and cabbages, and have just picked the last of the broad beans along with the first of the new season zucchinis. Tomatoes have set on the bushes, but are still very green. It is always a challenge to get one ripe red tomato before Xmas. 

maybe not this year, due to our being away and not getting that head start early on at the end of winter, or the first weeks of spring.

One very nice treat for this time of the year is the summer fruit crop. We are harvesting strawberries, blue berries, peaches, nectarines and plums. That equals fruit salad for breakfast for the next month.

I love the summer garden, but I don’t like the 40 degree days, or the potential for bush fires that are always in the realm of possibility when the wind picks up from the west.