Walkin' round the room singing Stormy Weather

One of the major differences between what I am doing now and my old life in the mobile phone software industry is that I am now much more aware of the weather. Before, the weather just used to make me grumpy whatever it was doing. If it was a nice hot sunny day, I’d think to myself, great, I get to enjoy this for about fifteen minutes as I walk to the train station and the rest of the day I’ll be stuck inside at the office.  If it was raining, I’d grumble that I’d get wet feet. If it was just a bland grey day I’d moan to myself how boring it was. But once I’d vanished within the office, all thought of the weather was gone for the day. 

Here at Pilsdon, the weather is a matter of deep import. Without both bounteous sun and plentiful rain our crops of radishes, potatoes, carrots, cabbages, cauliflower, sweetcorn, broad beans, brussel sprouts, peas, kale, broccoli, parsnips, onions, rhubarb, runner beans, courgettes, and whatever else we’ve planted won’t provide for us at harvest time. And once in a while the weather will do something surprising. Take today for instance. Part of my duties in the garden at the moment is to “open” it each morning, which entails going round the two greenhouses and two polytunnels, letting air in and watering where appropriate. So I was the first to open the door of the large greenhouse to discover the whole far end of it was under water. 

It had been a wild blustery night and the rain must have been coming down for hours because there were streams behind the greenhouse where there are not supposed to be streams, which had filled up the ditch beside the big polytunnel just below, creating a mini-aquarium visible from inside it - “ooh look they’ve got a lesser spotted earthworm!”  

First I (and a community member) dug a trench through the turf to allow the aquarium water to run off to the lower field on the other side of the polytunnel. For the greenhouse a small channel could be created to allow some run-off of water, but it would take several hours to go down. The poor potted tomato, leek, spring onion and pepper seedlings at the back of the greenhouse were waterlogged; I rescued them and brought them to higher ground, hoping that they haven’t sustained fatal injuries.  There wasn’t much I could do for the cabbages, beetroot and salad leaves that were planted in the midst of the flood plain except to hope that they were thirsty enough to cope.

To top it all, the wind had blown two panes of glass off the small greenhouse so the rest of the morning was spent picking up the broken glass from the compost heap below it (oh, what has my life come to?!) and improvising a temporary cover using some polythene sheeting, some twine and a couple of bricks.

The clouds parted this evening to give us a glimpse of an exquisite crescent Moon but no doubt they’ll be back with a vengeance tomorrow. And whatever they throw at us, I’ll be ready!