It's Raining!

It is raining.  Such relief.  The day is grey and drizzly and a little cooler than recent ones have been.  There are raindrops on the window beside my desk.  We got a little damp going from church to car and car to house.  It's raining.

Only, there's still not nearly enough.  We desperately need more.  A whole lot more.  Right across the country.  Boyo and I were talking about it this week.  Firstly, about how unusual it is that almost the WHOLE of New Zealand is in drought at the same time.  Usually it is one or two regions affected so you can kind of move stock out of your region then hopefully repurchase again after the worst is over, but at present the whole country is affected.  And we were talking about how isolated we are from both the knowledge and the effects of drought.  I mean, how many of us have stopped having showers?  Or curtailed our other water uses?  Boyo read that Wellington region now has a total outside water use ban in place.  But they've only got 20 days of water left in reserve, so one would expect that...I just hope it isn't too late.  We started bucketing water onto our lawn recently, but only the cold water before we actually get in.  The rest still goes down the drain.  Too much effort.  Isn't that sad?  We must waste so much good drinking water all the time without even realising it.

This rain is no longer looking like it will be as much as we were originally forecast, and we know it won't keep our garden or lawns going for long at all.  So we've gotten a bit creative.  Here's our lean-to.  In desperate need of attention... every time it rains we get a river, a raging torrent of water just splashing down onto the concrete because the spouting needs fixing.  But not today.  Today it is running into Munchkin's paddling pool, after we realised that the large buckets we put there this morning were overflowing!  Going to be a bit of a mission getting the water from the paddling pool onto the garden, but hey, at least it isn't going to be wasted.

Amy