Watering my garden

(I am reading back yesterday's post and it sounds way too scientific and rigid for the blog I wanted to write. I will try to change my voice and be less of a surveyor and more of the storyteller I promised to be. You all know I am a scientist by training, and I tend to write in boring, brown words. I report, I don’t recount. It’s time to change this style now.) So let me tell you about my first wave of awareness that water is indeed a scarce, constantly evaporating resource in Australia, the driest inhabited continent on Earth. Talking about the water crisis here is like speaking of the peace crisis to a Palestinian. Plenty of disputes, sharp turns in approaches to the crisis (political, too!), and no viable solution in sight yet... After a fifteen-year long draught, rain started to pour in during the winter of 2009, which coincided with the time when we moved to Melbourne from another baking-oven dry area, Los Angeles. We felt tricked by the weather, but at least we didn't have to water the garden with a hose, walking from the rose bush to the magnolia, the fuchsia and so on, like my father still does in rural Romania. Because all we had in the garden was a hose, no modern watering system. But by the time summer came, which is in early December Down Under, my plants and trees got thirsty and droopy. So I did what my father does when he comes home in the late afternoon from work: I watered the garden until small streams of surplus water rushed into the sidewalk and street. A few weeks and a satisfying garden revival later, my neighbour asked me if I heard of the water restriction rules. My face turned green, same shade as the perked up rose leaves, and I learnt that I was supposed to water only between 6 and 8AM or 8 and 10PM on alternate days (odd numbered days, as I live at an odd street number). All that winter's rain had already drained off, and I could only help my garden with a trickle from an obsolete hose... Today's picture is that of a flower from an Australian native eucalyptus tree, which drinks droplets of water in comparison with the non-native trees.