Nothing. Not a Drop

The météo promised a thunder storm yesterday. Little flashing symbols were shown on the chart for our area from about 11pm onwards.

Great, we need a good downpour.  I think it's rained twice in the whole month of April.

We had seen the promise of last night's rain on the graph for several days, so we thought it was a good moment (while things were still dry) to dislodge ourselves from the comfort of the cottage and move back into the house.  The First of May was spent trudging backwards and forwards with television, clothes, food, bedding, all our computer paraphernalia, bits of furniture.  Vita thought there was a danger we might forget to move her as well and so spent all day hurtling up and down the drive trying to make sure she was with us at all times.

As the day wore on we watched huge anvils of thunder clouds bank up on the horizon and congratulated ourselves on our prescience.  It would be a relief not to have to water, dragging hose pipes (probably strictly forbidden) across the field to water the hedge and the new trees and lugging watering can after watering can round the flower beds as I try to catch which shrubs are beginning to wilt. Most look remarkably healthy.  Amazing since the ground is rock hard and the only way any water gets through is via the cracks opening up in the clay.  Vita and Tod return with bone-dry feet from their early morning through-the-long-grass walks.

For the last two nights, we've had the faint rumbles of thunder and seen distant lightning flickering. Someone's getting the rain promised on the météo, but we've had nothing.  Not a drop!  So the water butt stays empty and I turn on the tap again.

We have a huge underground concrete tank down at the cottage holding two winters' rain water.  There is a small square concrete "lid" with two rusty hooks as handles and no means of getting the water out. Making use of the water has felt like a daunting task, but it's time to sort out pumps and hoses and connections. There's only "light rain" promised for this week and and no guarantee we'll actually get what's forecast.