With National Day of Trees only yesterday, our carbon footprint was definitely on our minds.
You may already know that Graeme and I purchased a piece of farmland in the wheatbelt in 2007 to rehabilitate as part of reducing our carbon footprint.
40,000 trees later sections of the property are unrecognisable!
We planted for diversity - and as the property was severely salt damaged only had a limited selection of plants from which to choose... so you find old man Saltbush next to a Casurina next to a flat top Yate and we even managed to plant and keep alive a few Callistemon sp. so the birds are loving it!
This year started with a bit of a worry as the rains fell and the river rose. The Bibikin Rd bridge caused a dam effect on the Coblinine River - completely flooding our property for a day. Our neighbours took a photo for us which is certainly memorable - floods like these have not been seen since the 50's and even then that was not this bad! However we need not worried - the trees loved the excess fresh water and have certainly thrived!
We are really looking forward to heading out there shortly - and seeing how nature weaves its magic wand; what plants survive the competitive and stressful environment and how the plants tollerate the shock of reaching the salt layer - we have seen how some eucalypts just die at 3m tall... fingers crossed ours are more tolerant.
This has been an exciting and interesting part of our life, and part of our family journey - we'll keep you posted with more photos after our trip.