A rescue mission

The garden of my Shack is blessed today with two new additions to the plant family - two pink Azaleas. I just love picking up rejected plants in the specials sections of supermarkets and loving them back to life at home. I got these two at Aldi for 99 cents each. What a bargain, and what a beautiful colour!

They're sitting on my window sill at the moment, but I will have to find some pots for them soon.

You might be wondering how my pineapple is going... yes, it's still alive. It nearly died over winter because I couldn't bring it inside to protect it from the frost. But I think it's going to make it! No fruit yet though... I might have to wait another year :(

Save me some H2O

For those of you who don't know, in Australia we're experiencing one of our worst droughts ever. For ten years our land has been starved of rain - our farmers are going broke and food prices look like they may be on the rise. Those of us who live in regional Australia are on heavy water restrictions.



Our local lake... only 3% of its water remains, as you can see.

There's a few things we do around the house to save water. We have to use grey water to water our plants, so I use my brother's bathwater or I stick a bucket in the shower. Although we are allowed to water our animals with tap water, we are trying different measures to use grey water - for example, my Mum's outside now rigging up a complex setup of pipes to run water from the roof of our house down to a bath in the duck pen. That way, they can have somewhere to swim without breaking water restrictions. Of course, we also have a rain water tank to catch runoff off the garage roof.

I think we all have a responsibility to preserve our water stores. So I'd like to know, what little tricks do you use around the home to save water? Perhaps we can share some ideas.