I spent the morning in a meeting and decided to come on home at lunch time. All the work I need to do today I can do from home. It's getting awfully windy and cold outside. It's the kind of weather that makes me want to hunker down and cook. I'm planning something warming for dinner.
We had some rain overnight. I don't think it really made a great difference, but I'll take any preciptation I can get. Our "exceptional" drought has me worried about a lot of things. How long will it go on? While our well is fine now, will our self-imposed water conservation help (we do after all share the aquifer...)? How will the drought affect our gardening next year? It seems many people are thinking about water these days. Let's hope they realize that it's going to take a lot more than prayer to get out of this situation...
There's discussion in other parts of this state to raise the water fees. If I paid for municipal water I'd be a little cranky to pay more because someone else wanted a green lawn in a time of drought. And on that point - why have a lawn? I have seen idiotic waste of space to have a tiny strip of lawn when other plantings would be more appropriate. Perhaps the answer could be a higher fee for those who use a lot of water... Or a tax on lawns! That said, I do have quite a lot of "lawn". We could call it pasture. It is made up of more than grass and it's never watered. It spent a lot of the summer in a very dormant state.
I think I need to eat some lunch, and maybe work on some suggestions for lawn replacements.
I see we're thinking along the same lines!
ReplyDeleteWe use city water. Luckily, our town's well is relatively deep and we're not in any immediate danger of running out. But as you said, who knows how long this will go on?
The s.o. and I have begun to impose very strict water restrictions on ourselves--combat showers (whose greywater is collected and used on plants), "if it's yellow let it mellow," etc. We've even stopped filling the kiddie pool for the ducks and geese; they get only drinking water for the time being. It will be interesting to see how low we can get the water bill.
I'm sure you've noticed that Georgia is in a much worse bind than the surrounding states are, yet we've had the same weather. The difference was Sonny Perdue's glacially slow reaction time.
I think we've seen a change in the electricity bill (for the pump), but we've also cut down on that by using a clothesline.
ReplyDeleteI think Georgia's drought conditions have gone on for a longer amount of time. And we in Western NC don't have the drain of a large metropolis (unless you count Atlanta...) :)
You're right, although what bugs me is that people were still watering their lawns in Atlanta in September! No one put any real water restrictions in place until very recently. Gah.
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