Sunday 25 October 2009

Water, water - nowhere

According to our local newspaper we have not had "consequential" falls of rain for 128 days. My garden and the gardens round my area are certainly showing the effect of this. Grey and straw are the primary colours, green is all but gone as a colour on the ground. The trees with deep roots still seem to be growing well however.
The 128 days without rain blows all of my calculations for buying a rainwater tank out of the water (if we had any). I have placed an order for an 5600 litre tank. Primarily I intend to use this for watering the garden and growing vegetables. A bit of self sufficiency. As far as the tank size goes, I am constrained by money and space. My calculations go like this. If I use 100 litres of water from it a day then it will last 56 days, I am a long way short if we have a drought and I need to rely on this water. I got the 100 litres from my current consumption. All domestic use of water plus garden use was just over 130 litres on my latest bill.
The sad thing about this is that it cost me well over $100 to have water available but only $18 of actual usage. At this rate the water tank will never pay for itself. If I took an economic view of using rainwater in preference to tap water the dollars simply do not add up. The sacrifices that we make for protecting our environment.
This ramble is due in part to the fact that I need to prepare either a concrete pad or a tank stand to install the tank. The concrete pad was not feasible, due to the sloping ground that I am on. So for some weekends now I have been building a water tank stand. I decided to do this myself and it is hard work. Nine post holes to dig in ground, that is extremely hard. I wanted to say as hard as concrete, but that would be an exaggeration. Still it is hard work and pushing keyboards at work is not sufficient muscle development for digging holes.
In practice I find that I can dig no more than one hole a day. Possibly I am soft. But I am getting harder. Possibly I am stupid, because a professional post hole digger would have done all the digging in less than an hour.
So the status is that I have 5 holes dug, 4 posts embedded in concrete, and a lot more to do.

Sunday 18 October 2009

Octoberfest - Ocsober

One of the radio stations in Brisbane has been promoting "Ocsober". The name meaning to stay sober in October, in fact to cut alcohol out of the month altogether. While I didn't sign up to Ocsober, I did decide to cut back on booze and have been pretty faithful to that. To be honest I prefer February to be the sober month. It is shorter and straight after the Christmas/New Year period when one must punish oneself for one's excesses. (I think that I got all of those "ones" correct.)
This weekend Brisbane put on Oktoberfest. Oktoberfest in my youth was always an excuse to get pissed, but I do like a good German sausage, a pile of Sauerkraut and some German Beer. While the Nutritionists may cringe at typical German fare, it is tasty and to my mind always a pleasure to indulge in German food. When I lived in Sydney one of my occasional pleasures was to go to the German Hofbrauhaus in the Rocks and have a good plate of Sausage with 3 types of mustard, Sauerkraut and a couple of Steins of Beer.
However the weekend proved to busy and tiring to get there. Plus there was the issue of drinking and driving if I did go. While the Brisbane Show Grounds are walking distance (a longish walk), quite frankly I was a bit tired after a walk in the morning and digging yet another hole to form the foundations of my water tank stand. So I never got there.
While out shopping for groceries, however, I decided that I could do my own Oktoberfest at home. So I picked up some German Sausages, Brockwurst and Knackwurst, and some Sauerkraut from the supermarket and detoured via a bottle shop and loaded up with a few German and Bavarian beers.
I found a great recipe for Sausages and Sauerkraut online, which I am about to start cooking, and I am half way through a nice German Pilsner.
I Guess that Ocsober is over for me.

Saturday 17 October 2009

Feeling good inside

People are the only really important thing in life. Well after Maslow's physiological needs have been taken care of i.e. drinking, eating, shelter, keeping warm etc.
I will explore Maslow and my need for Self Actualisation another day.
In the mean time my good humour has been prompted by a 17 year old girl who told me that she misses me. I miss her too. I guess she brings out the fatherly instincts in me that I have never fulfilled. In her case I don't know. I like to think that we are both nice people even though quite different in ages.