George's Property gets an upgrade!

George’s block of land gets upgraded!

Rain!  Again!  How inconvenient.  The scientists claim our culture / economic system / whatever... has created a ‘climate change’ - a rise in average temperature by 2^oC.  Sounds ok until you learn what this really means. Does it mean our day temperature becomes 23 instead of a perfect 21^oC? We wish!! And apparently, besides the Climate Change-causing mayhem of ocean currents changing, sea levels rising, increasing storms, etc, etc, there are at least nine other physical ecosystem limits we are warned about crossing:  Stratospheric ozone, land use change, freshwater use, biological diversity, ocean acidification, nitrogen and phosphorous inputs to the biosphere and oceans, aerosol loading, and chemical pollution. Phew! Not only that, there are good old-fashioned resource limits being reached at a rate of knots.



George is looking much happier now!



Meanwhile... over the past two summers ‘Poor George’ who had arrived at my back door looking like he’d been travelling for months across the great ‘City Desert’- after all the other dragons had gone to bed for the Winter – has been looking much better!  I’m happy to report that he now feels fairly secure in his own block of land at the front of my house – albeit fairly low-status as it is closer to the road and further away from the creek and Glenrock State Conservation Area! So what does ‘Fat George’ think of it all? I think he knows the humans have been sending a little love his way and I can tell by the look in his eyes he appreciates it.

Looking at ‘Happy Fat George’ made me think of ways I could make my lifestyle more ‘sustainable’ and I gave myself a pretty good Xmas present – I got rid of the last bit of turf out the front and replaced it with a gravelly-sandy surface called Rhyolite dust.  It forms a hard surface but is still loose enough to grow some native ground covers, and can be scratched out to make a little hole for laying Dragon eggs.  I was nervous that the neighbours might not understand the objective, but amazingly, I kept hearing things like, ‘looks great’!  and ‘Like the way you can see the garden better rather than the green turf running into the green of the shrubs’. 

 
Even so, when a friend was telling me she needed to buy a new mower, I was hesitant at first but then, thought ‘Why not?’ So I gave away my mower and fuel tin!  That was the weirdest feeling – so liberating and yet somehow scary.



This afternoon the sun is out and the distracting sound of lawn mowers has been droning on and on. I take a break from the computer to look if it is my dear old neighbour down the end of the street who has been struggling to maintain the weeds in the reserve next to his fence.  I should offer to help! I figure I’ve helped already by doing some Landcare work with the massive weed problem in the rainforest further along but the large area beside his fence is just mowed grass and low weeds. The only way to control it is to keep mowing or replant with something small that can be maintained and isn’t a fire hazard.  The neighbours in our quiet cul de sac want to plant a few citrus to replace most of the mowed grass.  They reckon it would be easier to maintain and everyone would be rewarded with fresh fruit, the Dragons would eat the Stink Bugs (they LOVE them!), and the people might be more inclined to take ownership and look after the rainforest (even though it is land ‘owned’ by Council, it is not Council’s responsibility to maintain it anyway).



An intrigued George watching the neighbour mowing



I look out the front and there is my next door neighbour mowing his lawn. 



George is watching from his favourite spot in his ‘improved value property’. 

And the droning of the mowing goes on and on...