Changing Tides - Brenda Moon » Environment

Rain water diverter

Brenda — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 06:31:50 +0000

We have bought a couple of different rain water diverters. But, they block up easily if leaves get in them and also don’t cope with heavy rain – quite a lot of water then overflows back into the stormwater. I could add a leaf excluder, but they are about $50 each. The diverter seem a lot more complicated than they need to be – partly because they try to put excess water back into the storm water.

So I decided to try making one that combines a diverter with leaf. I want to divert all the water – I’ll change this if the garden ever gets too wet.

Here is my first try:

An empty liquid fertilizer bottle, a small piece of gutter protector, a grey water hose and some silver tape. Cost – almost nothing.

I made one mistake in that I cut right through the downpipe and then found that it was better to have it flattened so it supports the top part of the downpipe (there isn’t a bracket above the cut off bit of downpipe to hold it up).

I think that the hose I’ve used to take away the water may not be large enough – if the bottle overflows, I’ll just have to get a larger hose and cut some of the neck of the bottle away so it fits.

We have a thunderstorm here now – so it is being tested. In very heavy rain the hose is too small to take away the water. I also need to attach the gutter guard better – it has come off. Once the rain eased back to a more normal level the smaller hose was sufficient.

Twigs and drips

Brenda — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 02:25:45 +0000

Is that a berry, or an eye watching you pass by?

Candles, Drumming and Fire twirling at ANU for Earth Hour

Brenda — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 10:36:59 +0000

We participated in Earth Hour tonight. After turning off all our lights and appliances (except the fridge) we walked down to ANU to watch the fire twirling on the oval. They had made a world globe using candles in paper bags. The fire twirlers were dancing to African drums.

Interested to see the news to see how many people joined in around Australia.

An interesting caterpillar

Brenda — Tue, 05 Apr 2005 12:38:19 +0000

We found an interesting caterpillar on one of our gum trees on Friday last week. It was very well camouflaged. We took some photographs of it:

It was on a young Eucalyptus leucoxylon var rosea and was about 10cm long when moving up the trunk.

We found this site
http://www.usyd.edu.au/macleay/larvae/larvae.html about identifying Australian caterpillars but we were unable to work out which it was.

I sent an email with some photographs to Don Herbison-Evans who has setup the website and he has been very helpful. He has narrowed it down to being in family Lasiocampidae. He thinks that Entometa fervens is the most likely, but doesn’t know if it has the black display bands. A picture of this species is here:
http://www.usyd.edu.au/macleay/larvae/lasi/fervens.html.

Another species, Paraguda australasiae does have the bands but feeds on wattles, not gum trees. A picture of this species is here:
http://www.usyd.edu.au/macleay/larvae/lasi/austra.html.

He suggested that we try to rear in in captivity to see what the moth looks like. We have caught it and been feeding it. Last night it pupated. So with a bit of luck we will have a moth to photograph in six or seven weeks.

It has made a cocoon between three gum leaves and the tissue that I had at the bottom of the bowl. The pupa inside the leaves is 4cm long.