Rainy Days

The weather here this last week in Marburg has been most unseasonal. Showers every day (some very heavy) and somewhat on the cool side, especially in the mornings. This has slowed the garden down a little but the Toms are still coming on strong, as shown below.


We picked the largest of the Yellow peppers, and are now waiting for the smaller ones (shown below) to grow up to eating size. Yesterday we picked the first of the Aubergines, which Mrs Haddock cooked with Zuchinni and fish with a cheese topping. Delicious.

A consequence of all of the rain of the last week is that our rain water tank is now 85% full, which is approx 4000 litres, and that is a fair bit of water. This water is used for the washing machine, flushing the toilets and to water the garden. A control pump in the cellar pumps water from the tank to the toilets and washing machine. It also switches the feed to mains water when the water level in the tank drops below 10%.

I hope in the future that these type of rain harvesting systems will become more popular across Europe. It certainly decreases the ammount of mains water we consume, which is ultimately good for the enviroment, and with a lot of Southeren Europe in drought conditions for the past year or so, it makes sense for all concerned.