Water, water everywhere....

Tuesday, May 13th

While enjoying my morning herbal tea I heard the strangest noise - shh,shh getting louder and louder, after figuring out what it was I decided to take a pic -

The noise was my

neighbors sprinkler system watering the garden - I was so surprised because -

1 - I haven't heard this noise since last summer.

2 - Did someone forget to tell them it's Spring the wettest time of the year.

3 - It's 6:30am - What are you doing!!

Don't get me wrong I love green grass, fresh flowers and seeing a beautiful lush garden but when will people realise that it's not necessary to start watering in the beginning of Spring just so you can have the greenest grass in the street for the Summer. Well our grass is not bright green, currently covered in a blanket of thatch which needs to be removed, though our flower beds are looking very healthy.

I remember last summer, when I would go for my morning walks while heavily pregnant with S, all you could hear was sprinklers coming on one after another and then see the water running down the street into the drains from over watering.

It really is a shame to see the water waste here, coming from OZ and living in UK both countries have hose water bans and a garden sprinkler system is out the question. You would get fined for being so wasteful. I wish they would do that here, it would stop the waste.

Last summer our county water department asked for people to water every other day, so if your house number was even you watered every even day and if an odd number then every other day.This bizarre system didn't really didn't work since people decided to water the lawn twice a day on the day's they could water.

Why are people so obsessed with green lawns?

I came across some interesting articles on water usage - domestic usage in 2000 and another article with some great ideas on how to reduce your water usage.

I'm going to review the articles again in order to practice what I preach!

Note: This year our sprinklers will run only once a day, every other day for a short amount of time and not during the peak heat of the day. Hopefully this will help to provide us with a smaller water bill each month, so far I'm planning for my sprinklers to start working late May/ early June - maybe even mid June.

It's Spring in Michigan!

Sunday, May 4

Spring finally arrived here in Michigan this weekend after our long, cold winter (Oct to Mar), we are finally seeing signs of Spring. All of our bulbs are now out adding lots of splashes of color to our brown flower beds.



It's lovely to go outside and feel the sunshine on your face, even S was enjoying the sun shinning on her face while sitting in the shopping cart after visiting our local garden and home improvement store.

My lavender bushes are growing again - yeah. The daffodils and hyacinths are out showing of their frills and pretty petals.

The biggest surprise this weekend was seeing J again outside in the garden starting to plant some of his veggies for his veggie patch.
J is a bit like a bear and wakes up after his winter hibernation period is over. So I've decided to include some photos below of J potting in his garden today. Plus some photos of our flowers in the front garden for everyone to enjoy.