Well, the colour is finally over. It's been a beauty but now the Manchurian Pear in the driveway is a reminder that autumn is coming to an end and winter is just around the corner. Speaking of winter, our skiing trip is booked and seven weeks away, but...it's still fairly warm...last week we were having days of 21 degrees. We've all been wearing short sleeves and the children are so overdressed in their winter school uniforms that at the end of the day their little bodies are hot and bothered. This week the forecast is for some 18s, maybe some 16s. It's going to need to get mighty cold and mighty wet to make it a good ski season. Last year there was no snow - trust me - no snow. We had to walk in and out of the lodge instead of skiing in and out. Overnight the resorts made snow by shooting fine water vapour up into the sky. So, it was technically cold enough to make snow. It's just that last year we were in the grips of the severe drought so there was nothing falling from the sky.
As mentioned here, the El Nino is over but there still hasn't been much rain and in Canberra we are now facing stage 4 water restrictions (no outside watering at all). Generally, Australian cities use only a 5 stage water restriction system. For all of the spring and summer 2006-07 Canberra has been on stage 3 water restrictions. These new harder restrictions are due in June if the rains don't come. So far we've had below average rainfall for April and only one day of rain in May. Hopefully, it will get so cold we wont feel like watering anything and then the restrictions wont matter. At least wont matter for those of us trying to grow things in the city. Life in the bush has not had the luxury of the tap and I'm sure they feel we can't even begin to understand water restrictions.
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