In which we decide to finish the garage

G'day all!

We had big plans for this weekend. I promised to help Nathan with the garage. We need to get the last of the foam onto the back corner so that we can start rendering and stuff.

So I wandered around, doing my own thing, whilst Nathan did his own thing - trying to stop a leak in the toilet filling pipe (note he forgot to tell me that he hadn't fixed it and had not reconnected the pipe...until after I discovered there was no water in the cistern....).

Then I came home. Within half an hour, the sky turned dark grey and the trees bent under the gale-force wind:


and suddenly it was persisting down! The rain was coming in sideways:


I discovered that the front porch is not water-tight - there is a gap between the house guttering and the laserlight.

Within 15 minutes, we had had at least 7mm of rain (someone had not emptied the rain gauge for a couple of weeks), but more like 10-15 cos the garden started looking a bit flooded.

Anyway, after an hour it seemed ok to go out again. The garden was damp but not flooded - it seems to soak up any moisture it gets. Our previous place would've been under water. The radar map looked like this:

(image copyright BoM.gov.au) The rain band was to the north of us. We only needed to go a kilometre north of where we live and a couple of ks west.

Well.... let's just cut it short. (most pics not clickable)

The normally placid drain by Springvale Road at Spaghetti Junction:


The corner I wanted to turn left at.


This brave car (a year old Mazda 6) took on the flood waters of unknown depth at the corner where I wanted to turn left. Nathan said ah just follow them. Go on! It is OK!:


I am very glad that I didn't follow it. a) the water was rising as we sat waiting for the lights to change, and b) this:

Oh dear!

The local drain/creek - the concrete base is about a metre under water here:


The "retarding basin"

(if you look at the big image, you might just be able to see some spots on the water - these are native ducks. Normally they swim really close to the edge of the weir, but not this time!)

The sun starts breaking out:


The radar map when we got home, safe and sound thanks to my lovely little car:


And the rain gauge - emptied before we went out:


So much for getting that last lot of foam on the back corner of the garage! Maybe it is not DH's brother who is the jinx!

Nathan vs Garden round 2

On Sunday Nathan took on the neighbours-be-gone on the other side of the path form our new garden bed. The plants did provide a privacy screen but let's face it - they are pittosporums growing where we want to put the roses. Roses vs pittosporums. Roses 1: pittosporums nil.

So Nathan attacked the neighbours-be-gone with crow bar and mattock. Here's the photo story of his mighty battle with one of three plants:

Note the technique with the mattock.


Sometimes brute force can help

(though the mattock works better)

Going

Going

GONE!

And turned to mulch.


After hard work, a man deserves a long cold beer


ahhhhh!



Now we have a mulched bed awaiting some rain and placement of roses! Hooray!


Nathan 2: Garden nil! See the difference?


anon!

Wet wet wet

G'day all!

Ever since Nathan pulled the cladding off the side of the garage, the weather has been a bit equivocal.

Today Nathan's younger brother came around to help put the new cladding on.

Here's a picture of the sky this afternoon (not clickable)


And here is what the cladding looked like on Monday (picture taken from south end):


And here is the pic from today (note the addition of the full bin of water, picture taken from north end):


Here's a portion of the radar pic from the BoM at 9pm today:

The big arrow shows the direction of the rain. The little arrow shows where we are. Note that the rain does not extend more than about 5km beyond our place. It has been like this for most of the afternoon. Typical!

However, these

are really happy about the rain because half the plants were plonked in the ground last night before the rain started.

So there is good to go with the bad.