Are You Thirsty?

I lost two tomato plants on my balcony because of the cold weather. I waited untie after the new moon in June to put them out, but that wasn't good enough. The wind has been bowing steady from the North and once the sun goes down, around ten p.m., it gets cold . Average evening temperatures were hovering around 2-3 Celsius. Today iit is raining and while we need the rain, thre is also a cool wind blowing along with it. Ah well, keeps the forest fires under control.

It is easy to take water for granted. I look out my window and there is Lake Superior, the largest, lake in North America. How could there be a water shortage? Well, when you stop and think about how much of the fresh water in our region is polluted the scene changes. We do have water but most of it isn't fit to drink and I wouldn't swim in it either. In previous articles I've talked about water as a commodity. This week I'll discuss water usage and ways to increase your local water supply.

A rainbarrel, is an obvious way to save rainwater. Hook it up to your downspout and voila, water. Now why when we build houses we don't include at least one rainbarrel, I don't know. We need to include water saving, reclaiming and conservation technologies in our overall design, whether it be a private home, public building, office or neighbourhood, we are designing.

A good place to begin is to examine how we use water. Each of us needs to know how our water use impacts on the system. Wec are then able to see how our daily routines place demands upon the water supply and begin to consider how we can alter those routines and reduce our use.

This knowledge not only enables us to save water but it increases our self-reliance as we learn how to build our own water supply system and consequently our family or personal food production system. We need water to live, the food we consumes needs water to live, taking water for granted is taking our own life for granted and that is very, very dangerous.

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