Our Poor Lawn

Things are getting pretty dry right around New Zealand.  We've had one of those summers.  Unpredictable.  Weird.  Like the last few, but opposite.  While the past two summers were quite wet and cool, this summer has been dry and hot.  At least since January.  December rained and rained and rained.  Then we've had almost no rain for the past two months.

See where the garden watering ends and the dry begins?

Hills are browning off.  There's talk of farmers selling stock, and milk drying up.  Some folks are having to truck in water, others are on water restrictions.

I usually only water my vege garden.  The roses get an occassional splash when in flower, but mostly everything else gets left to fend for itself.  If it doesn't feed me, it can wait for rain.  But our lawn is looking very sad.  We don't eat it, that's for sure, so I guess in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter.  But my guinea pigs do.  And they can wreak havoc on a healthy lawn.  So I've been deliberately letting the edges round the garden get some water, instead of my usual pedantic creed of keeping it all for the veges.  The piggies are getting carrot ends, apple cores, and long grass cut from around the trees to supplement their  feed. I'm moving the cage twice a day.

And we've just started bucketing water onto our lawn.

It seems completely wrong to me to water a lawn with good quality drinking water when there might not be enough to go around.  But taking water that is otherwise going to be wasted anyway?  Well, that's an entirely different matter.  We waste 7-8 litres of water every time we run the hot tap, waiting for the hot water to get to us.  That's a LOT of wasted water.  The past few days our lawn has had about 1-2 9litre buckets per day.  And that's just the water from our showers.  We simply put the shower head in the bucket till the water starts to feel warm, instead of leaving it to go down the drain.  Carry the bucket out, spread water over the lawn, return bucket to bathroom.  Can't be bothered with saving any other water at present, mostly due to the need to carry it outside, but doing this might just keep our lawn slightly alive until rain does eventually come.  Sigh.  We were forecast for showers this morning.  I walked to a friends.  I got some light spits, so light that if it hadn't been windy you'd not even have noticed them.  Big sigh.  I'm wondering how long I'm going to be bucketing water for?!?  But grateful that we aren't faced with no food, no livelihood, no water.  Very grateful.

Amy