It's funny watching nature around my place, we have been in a bit of a dry spell here for a few months, the ground is as hard as hell and apart from my watered food forest everything on my property is on their own water wise. Yesterday the black cockatoos turned up and started ripping into trees looking for grubs that are on the move, first time in months I have seen them. The local storm bird has been going nuts calling every few minutes and we have had an increase of birds turn up on the lake. Last night millions of flying ants took to the sky and somehow ended up in my kitchen . Black ants are also on the move into the brick work of the house. The Australian bush has a great trick of releasing chemicals to allow water to soak up around the trunks of trees. I have yet to start to smell this but fingers crossed later today I will. Last step in nature letting me know is the phone from my father inlaw.... "she's gonna rain tonight Baz..." :clap: So fingers crossed and I'm gonna get some rain.
https://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR663.loop.shtml#skip Looks like it's going to miss us. We will get the edge. Fingers crossed there is something behind it!
baz the black cockatoos have been through here and gone again but the bloody stormbird has been going non stop for weeks and the termites have been on the wing every night for months (I think they are going to where the rain is) and don't mention black ants to me I'm so over them.....they are everywhere in the house and I mean everywhere. We wouldn't mind a drop or two just now.
How did you go? We managed to float some Blackbean seeds down the gutters with that sustained burst. Over fast though!
We had 32mm over night, rained a constant amount most of the night, not enough to create water movement across the landscape and end up in my swale system. But it was still a nice drop. :clap:
Just dug around in the garden, mulch still dry in places. Tank went from about an 1/8th to a 1/2 which takes a load off.
We got a storm and 51mm of rain, friends lost some trees, didn't stop raining or rumbling till 4.00am.. I'm so tired. Rain was welcome but it may have been too much I'm waiting for DH to come back and tell me how sloshy the drive is too wet and we will have to cancel the excavator.
You know it's raining when you see your first Eastern Striped Marsh Frog. Plus a thousand Cane Toads. Got the usual suburban flooding at my house, been a long time since that's happened. Tank is close to full. How many mm at yours, Baz?
You can keep the cane toads we haven't got too many here but frogs are everywhere was out weeding late today and one sat within 1 metre of me and just watched me weeding... lazy sod could have ate the termites that were flying around. I did my good deed today and moved more tadpoles from the bath to the water chestnut tub for some reason they all die in the bath tub, frogs didn't spawn in the tub last night maybe they didn't want to get wet in the rain LOL but every morning for the past month I've been moving the spawn.
Frogs are all singing tonight at my place. I got about 20 mm last night, and more this afternoon and this evening. I enjoyed it so much that I stood out in the rain and thunder this afternoon just to remember what it feels like! My 5000L tank is full and I'm pumping the excess up to 'Big Bertha' the 20,000L header tank - 2 lots of 5000L so far.
We had 65mm over the two days following my post :clap: We did not have enough rain to create movement of water into my catchment systems but anything is good at this point. The grass will start to green up and grow keeping the horses happier. It's interesting to see that areas where I had woody mulch the moisture often did not get to the soil surface where the areas of leafy mulch it did.
