Winter in Wollongong

I love maps and atlases. I love to just look at all the different places in the world. It’s so amazing to see how human beings have covered the globe. I was recently looking at my world atlas and saw a section on the various climates of the world. I noticed that our city was at the beginning of a dark green band that stretches along the south east coast of Australia all the way down to Tasmania. According to the atlas, dark green represents “marine climates.” A marine climate is characterized by a warm summer and a cool, wet winter. It is one of the less common climate regions, with just spots here and there on the globe. Other cities in the world that are in marine climates include Auckland, New Zealand, Port Elizabeth, South Africa, Dublin, Ireland, and in North America, Vancouver, British Columbia, and Seattle, Washington.

Basically what that means for us is that it rains…constantly. I thought back in the summer, "wow it rains a lot here." Then the winter hit. We still get sunny days, but rarely will you have two in a row. There are good things and bad things about living in a marine climate.

The good thing is that everything is lush and green. I think you can grow just about anything here. Emily and I have been participating in some community gardens in the area and what we have found out is that it is just cool enough that you can grow cool weather plants like you have in Europe and North America, and just warm enough that you can grow tropical plants from Africa, the Caribbean, etc. Then you add all of the beautiful native Australian plants, and well…it’s pretty spectacular. Here are a few pictures from this past month (keep in mind that this is the middle of winter):

The view from our back porch (the plastic bags hanging in the trees are my neighbors version of scare crows to keep the birds off his fruits and veggies).

Our front yard (not much yard really) is full of native Australian trees and shrubs.

Laneway community garden (an inner-city garden project)

Dapto community garden

North Wollongong community garden – this is actually an 11 year old “food forest.” This little picture doesn’t even do it justice. Basically, just about everything in the forest is something edible or something that helps the edible plants. In this picture you can see papaya trees, banana trees, sugar cane, a sage bush, and a couple of other plants.

Needless to say, for a plant lovers like us, it is pretty awesome here.

But there is a downside to our marine paradise. In a culture that typically dries their clothes by hanging them outside, all this rain can make for a real laundry headache. We have had as many as ten days in a row of rain here. So we often have scenes like this in our house:

Bulging dirty laundry bag

Usually the best we can do is about half a load of laundry that we then hang on this little rack:

I’ve noticed our neighbors, who have a couple of small children, have several of these on their back porch along with close lines running across the porch. I guess you do what you have to. But for the most part, it’s a small price to pay.

On Sunday I planted my own little winter vegetable garden:

Growing vegetables in winter…how fun is that?