LOCAL WARMING
Everybody has heard of Global Warming since Al Gore invented it, but that is ‘The Big Picture’, so it is now time to contemplate ‘The Small Picture’, how it affects me personally right now, not in 2040 when I’ll be dead anyway.
So this is a look at ‘Micro Meteorology’ as opposed to ‘Macro Meteorology’. Just remember that you read the term here first. Maybe I’ll appear on TV with a ‘cherry-picker and a pointy stick and make a big swag of money.
How is this warming phenomenon affecting me, you might ask? That was a rhetorical question meaning you, not me as in Skull. Well to be honest, I couldn’t really give a flying frolic how it’s affecting you, because this is about how it’s affecting Chateau Skull.
First off, the Chateau is now infested with cockroaches for nine months of the year. These horrible little beasties never used to be seen in the Chateau ten years ago, they always stayed north of the border in NSW because it was too cold for them down here in Melbourne.
This may not be strictly correct, we used to have ants, but then we got mice and the ants disappeared and perhaps the mice were eating them along with the baby cockroaches. We then got a cat (not through any pleading on my part I might add, I’m a bird and dog person). The cat has never been allowed inside the house, but it must have caught the mice when they went outside to get a suntan. This keeps them out of laboratories to be tested with all sorts of horrids, because labs prefer white mice, which is a bit racist if you ask me. But nobody ever has.
Anyway, I blame warming on both the profusion of cockroaches and shortage of white mice. Incidentally, I read somewhere that there are three different types of cockroach, Australian, American and Asian. Now this may be a bit of Nationalistic Jingoism, but the Aussie variety are apparently black and as far as cockroaches go are relatively clean. On the other hand the Yankee and Asian ones are brown and filthy. Make of that what you will.
To get back to ‘Local Warming’, here at the Chateau we have been experiencing a drought for the last ten years. Not a total drought you understand, but a distinct shortage of drizzle let alone persisting down rain. This means that the State Gov’t has passed an edict saying that we are only allowed to water plants (not lawns) twice a week before 8:00am. You are also not allowed to wash your cars and need a permit to fill your swimming pool.
As the Chateau is odd (in more ways than just the number) I get to water on Wednesdays and Sundays. I usually do this around 10:00am and if anybody asks, I tell them my body clock is permanently set to West Australian time. I also don’t drive and if my spouse’s car is dirty, I tell her to take it to the car wash. As for swimming pools, well! to be honest, we don’t have one.
When it comes to ‘lawns’, I have two, one at the front and one at the back. It does of course depend on your precise definition of a lawn. Mine do have some grass, but consist mainly of weeds. If they are mowed regularly they look like lawns, if you squint into the sunlight.
I must admit that I prefer summer when they turn brown and if you kick the weeds, clouds of dust rise up. This is basically because I’m a lazy sod when it comes to sods.
At the moment here at the Chateau we’re supposedly in the middle of winter, but somebody forget to tell Thor or whichever God is in charge of these things. (Might as well blame the Gods, nobody else is going to shoulder the responsibility). We keep getting a splatter of rain during the night and then a sunny day with temperatures in the low teens. This is perfect for weeds and always too damp to mow the buggers.
Cheers
SkyBlueSkull
PS. This is supposed to be the middle of winter and today it’s been sunny all day and the temperature has reached 18C. Luckily, I’ve taught the Good Lady Wife (GLW) how to mow and she decided to mow the front ‘lawn’.
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
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