This is the time of year when Bermudians traditionally repaint their roofs. The roofs are very important here since nearly all the island water comes from rainwater which is collected through a rather ingenious system of limestone roof slabs or "slates." Norm Abram explains it well on the website where he describes a "This Old House" project that has done in Bermuda in 2004: http://www.auntneas.com/this-old-house.

Once upon a time, a limestone slurry was used on the roofs to help purify the rainwater as it made its way down into the large cisterns that are usually found in the cellar or under the front porch. Now, instead of limestone, a special non-toxic paint is used. Here are a couple of pictures of our roof receiving its annual coat of paint.

Eric recently checked our cistern for the first time since we moved in to see how much water we had collected from the winter rains. Well, he found a dead bird floating on the surface and a step ladder on the bottom of the tank...both of which he fished out. Was the bird standing on the step ladder when it fell in?? We added some bleach to the tank, threw out all the freezer's ice cubes, and made sure that our WaterPik water filter was blinking its cheerful green light indicating that it was on the job.

Because our "water awareness" is high, we don't take any long showers anymore. The routine here is turn on the water, get wet, turn off the water, lather, turn on the water, rinse, turn off the water, and get out. If I were to get on my environmental podium here, I might suggest that we ALL should be showering like that to conserve our Spaceship Earth resources, but I wouldn't lecture anyone about that, would I?? (Any of my former housemates out there??)