Despite the long drought conditions in Victoria this year and last year, recent rainfall seems to have broken the "bad omen" as nearly 100mm has been recorded on Quang Minh Temple's weather station. Not only are all the tanks are full, but the soil is soft and good for the coming planting season. Mr Hieu and Tuan have donated 2 pumps and their time to connect the tanks, run pipe and fit taps to support the planting project. Surely as a result, more young plants will be able to survive the severe hot and dry summer to come.

Sunshine Plumbing is scheduled to complete the connection for the three large 45m3 tanks next week, getting ready for another string of heavy rainfall, hopefully similar to that observed in the last 2 weeks. Once this job is done, the total capacity that all the tanks can hold at any one time is 191m3, adequate to sustain the Lunar New Year Marigold project and the Revegetation of Solomon's Ford river valley project at the front of the temple. During the last National Tree Planting Day on 27/7/2008, QMT and volunteers planted more than 500 grasses and ground cover plants, and Victoria University's Work for the Dole participants finished planting another 1000 plants.