More rain and more flooding

12:37 AM 2013. rain, flooding No Comments

More rain, bucketed down again. some of the surrounding areas rain related tidbits here

As it happens: the Valley prepares as floodwaters rise | Clarence Valley Daily Examiner

The weather radar snapshot is telling

Phone screen weather radar snapshot

What a wet month, after late January early Februaries floods, detailed here  we received a whole heap more rain and while we might not have received quite as much as earlier in the month, it was much more intense, falling heavily in a short period of time

Here's the backyard

Back yard as a river

Our creek overflowing

So much rain it washed the bridge away !  The bridge had survived for 3 years and 5 or so floods, hopefully we can rescue it.

Foot bridge washed away

Here's where it used to cross

Creek crossing, sans bridge !

and just walking down to the creek on the track was an ordeal of torrential water

One of the disadvantages of solar and not being connected to the grid is not being able to get into the shed to to jobs using power (I have table tops, bedside chest of draws etc) needing sanding with the belt sander.  Ahh well, caught up with several  more movies and books ! 

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after the rain

1:15 PM 2013, cooking, garden, tamarillo 1 Comment

After the rain

some minor repairs were needed and a few things didn't survive, most noticeably the recently planted new Tamarillo

Tamarillo seedling went toes up

but our wonderful neighbour Chantel provided us with another, we planted this one up on a large mound in the sweet potato patch to help keep it's roots a little drier. The orchard area can get a little damp with lots of water, which we had ! Thank you so much to our wonderful neighbour

Tamarillio redux. !

Some of the plants of course LOVED the wet, the Orange Jasmine went mad with flowers and it's wonderful perfume wafts through the house

Orange Jasmine

when life give you limes, you make lime cordial

The lime tree has gone into overdrive, producing a huge quantity of fruit, we have sold some and made Lime cordial, with the recipe sourced from Sally Wise's book Life in a Bottle with others but we have way too many.  It's a little sweet for us but previous attempts to make it less sweet (sorry for messing with the recipe Sally !) by using less sugar, ended in the disaster of fermenting cordial !  So we just squeeze more fresh lime juice in, to tone the sweetness down.

We also use them often just cut in 1/2 and squeezed into some cold glass of water.  This  was a favourite drink of ours whilst in Cambodia last year.

Sally Wise's book "Life in a Bottle" + excess Limes = Lime cordial !

Garden

the garden is on the go

Corn coming along

and the chickens are on the grow

Male = meat,  female = eggs

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Wet, wet, wet

7:13 PM 2013, floods, rain No Comments

Wet, wet, wet - January 2013 Floods

Continuing with the musical theme from the last post, wet it was... We copped some 600mm over four days (estimate as the gauge went over the top one day) from the residual of ex-Tropical Cyclone Oswald

Weather Radar Image Capture

We weren't alone though, with much of the Queensland and Northen NSW east coast similarly affected and it was apparently the largest recorded flooding of the Grafton river

The Dam overflowed

Dam, full to capacity

the creek through our property burst it's banks in a couple places and was flowing a torrent

Creek roaring with water

the property suffered some minor damage, mostly driveway erosion and tree-falls

A tree fell and I didn't hear !

though the garden has some damage and the recently planted Tamarillo that was doing really well also decided it was all too much.

and we were flooded in for several days. with the Oakey Ck causeway crossing impassable

Oakey Ck causeway flooded

but the advantage of trying to achieve a modicum degree of self sustainability and living up a slope away from the Nymboida River saw us catch up with our movie watching and book reading.

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