http://www.independentweekly.com.au/news/local/news/general/rain-little-help-as-lakes-dammed/1570928.aspx?storypage=0

I condemn the South Australian Labor Party…that’ll do for now, I’m sure Peter Garrett needs some condemnation too. All of us, really, for not shouting louder, earlier. How depressing.

very good! Next headline to include “giving lippia” perhaps?

Elise and furious balancing: I’m hoping that during the next two years the Rudd Govt will sort out all these inconsistencies (why should ANYONE become ineligible to buy “green power”?), if only to make consistent the bookkeeping for watching the nation’s carbon emissions, and to encourage as many households and business as possible to LOWER their carbon emissions.

This year the return to decent winter rainfall has reminded me of the weeds I’d become a bit complacent about. Truth be told the drought has been very good for the native grasslands we’ve been restoring….weeds like patersons curse, thistle, cats-ear etc have not done well in the drought and the grasses have really thrived in their absence. I don’t really want to think about the task ahead should the weeds be equally well adapted to long periods of drought.

I condemn lippia but not the above headline…”lawn order”, indeed.

From the book “Waterwise Gardening”, 3rd Edn, by Kevin Walsh, bought in Angus & Robertson bookstore: Lippia – Phyla nodiflora (syn. Lippia nodiflora), origin Australia.

From the CSIRO website: “The two species in Australia, Phyla nodiflora, and the weedy, Phyla canescens (lippia). Both are believed to be introduced but the origin of P. nodiflora requires clarification.”

“Some botanists believe that it could be native to Australia which has implications for lippia management.”

I had checked in my trusty Waterwise Gardening book before accepting the offer from the neighbours. It seemed to fit our theme of waterwise native garden.

The CSIRO website supports your viewpoint, although it is a bit ambivalent about origins.

The neighbours gave us some, which our puppy dug up three or four times. We thought we’d lost it. Now it is taking over the garden, and I suspect has crept under the fence in taking over the lawn of our other neighbours. Oops.

Unbelievably tenacious stuff, that Lippia, and quite pretty. Doesn’t need much water, and doesn’t need mowing either.

She called all of the power companies here and they all had the same policy, I think it must a problem with the state legislation, who knows, I’m just glad I didn’t go ahead with it, because it would have really bugged me. I’m just trying to work on better efficiencies at home and I buy green power.

(a) it dropped the cost of buying the solar system (which helped our short-term budget),

(b) there is legislative risk that the damn government would do something reeel stoopid like scrapping the MRET system (which I believe underlies the REC’s market) so we got while the gettin’ was good,

(c) we have no problem with sharing the credit for renewable energy – if someone else can meet their targets by subsidising our solar system, then I’m happy to oblige!

It sounds like your sister has a recalcitrant energy company. If the Rudd government, and Penny Wong in particular had some internal consistency with their symbolic posturings, then they would legislate to ensure renewable energy was encouraged at every opportunity.

Why not encourage your sister to plant some big gum trees (or rather saplings that will grow into big ones)? I don’t entirely trust other entities to use all the money to the purpose they claim, including green energy. I’d sooner plant gum trees myself, water them, nurture them, and know for sure that the money was used to a green purpose.

We even planted 2 gum trees on the verge at the end of our street, about 3 years ago. We bought them from a nursery, taking advice on a suitable species for a verge planting. The neighbours probably thought we were nuts, hand carting buckets of water to the little saplings in the summer, especially since it wasn’t inside our yard or even on our verge (which already has 2 medium size gums). The council now waters them with their water truck, and they have grown into very beautiful young trees.

And I have another pedantic, grumpy ally in book form.

A sample: “Raft of measures ‘The Government announced a raft of measures to tackle child poverty’. Also ‘a whole raft of measures‘. Meant to suggest breadth but implies hasty assembly , using driftwood.”

We get paid for energy we put back into the grid, and it pumps out the most power in summer when we are using the most electricity for air conditioning.

Our summer power bill dropped by three-quarters, i.e to about 25% of its previous levels.

Before getting her PV system, like me, she purchased green energy [100%], so we have a situation where now having invested in amorphous panels, which were more expensive than the cyrstalline, she is using more non-renewable power than she was before she made that investment.

So buyer beware to anyone thinking of getting solar panels. It’s not something she thought to ask when she was going through the paperwork, and I can’t say I blame her for that, I certainly never would have thought a power company could deny you the ability to buy green power.