Water torture

I'm thinking of going into hydroponics. Growing plants in water is going to be an essential skill where I live, in view of the fact that we have just survived our second 150-year flood in four years.
Our usually docile little stream, 300ml deep and curving gently around three sides of the property, burst its banks at around 4m last Friday night and scared the pants off us. Literally. We're very short of pants now, among other essential items of clothing, but please don't send any because we haven't anywhere to put them until the house has been emptied of water, dehumidified, cleaned, repaired, repainted, refurnished and, one might hope, given a new smell.
But we're putting a brave face on it. There was no loss of life, despite one of our cats choosing the risk of drowning over being stuffed in a cat cage and shut in the neighbour's garage with the dog. She scarpered at the first hint of confinement and caused me a sleepless night (also in the neighbour's garage).
She was fine, of course. When we returned to the house the next day she leapt down from her safe haven on top of the kitchen cupboards and angrily demanded to know why breakfast was so bloody late.
At that point I suspect The Partner would gladly have exchanged her for his garden shed, which was carried off in its entirety complete with his favourite power tool, the electric plane.
On the bright side, he was able to celebrate that his recent plantings on the stream-side had largely survived.
I've never really loved that good old favourite, Grevillea "Bronze Rambler", probably because you see it absolutely everywhere. Now I know why. Like the cat, coincidentally also bronze in colour, it's a survivor. The four plants we put in to grow down our rather unsightly bank were still there the morning after, festooned with debris but perfectly cheerful. That's the Aussie spirit for you.
Bronze Rambler is used to making do with little food, poor soil and drought, so I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that it was disinclined to give up in the face of a raging torrent of muddy water. We'll reward it with a few more mates and hope they get their roots down before the next 150-year flood.
In the best of all possible worlds I'd combine Rambler with other plants for a bit of drama, but it probably doesn't need any more drama just at the minute. We certainly don't.
A little further upstream, the star jasmine did equally well. Plenty of people told us we were nuts to plant it so low down the bank, but now we're smugly pointing it out to everyone who comes by to survey the damage.
Even though it likes a sunny spot and our bank is a bit shady - to say nothing of wet! - it will grow happily in either situation and tolerates most soil conditions. Its tag from the garden centre, which is miraculously still on it, says "water well over dry summer months". Yeah right.
Ironically, we will have to water it, and we'll also give it a feed of a good organic fertiliser like blood and bone to replace whatever has been leached out of the soil by the flood. That should keep the foliage lush.
For the nervous, star jasmine is not related to the true jasmine, which is known for its invasive behaviour here in the north. This clever stuff is "jasmine-like" and its real name, Trachelospermum jasminoides, refers to the perfume given off by its flowers.
A while ago we discovered a grass called Carex secta which looked like it might go the distance on our stream bank. It wasn't especially pretty and had none of the charm of, say, Frosted Curls, but it looked big, stroppy and determined (for a grass) so we bought a few and planted them low down on the bank. Good decision.
Secta is a common grass for swampy areas around New Zealand and is a useful plant for re-establishing or enhancing wetland areas. Older plants in moist to wet sites (yep, that's us) often form thick, trunk-like bases a metre tall from their own tightly matted roots. We can't wait for that to happen. Still, according to the weather forecasters, we've got 150 years.
If you'd like to make suggestions, ask questions, agree, disagree, advise, elaborate, comment or berate, please email me at info@gardenpress.net. And to those who are hanging out for basil recipes, I promise I'll send them as soon as I get my recipes books dry!