The wrong sort of rain

No doubt most of you are aware the a large swathe of the UK is currently experiencing drought conditions and is subject to a hose pipe ban. We are fortunate in not having a hose pipe ban here in the north west of England, neither do we have any flood warnings. For several days now it has rained stair rods and this was the scene at the end of our garden yesterday morning.

The farmer has ploughed all of his fields except this one, which is now water logged. About two weeks ago he fertilised it. The aroma was so pungent that I had to go out. It was a fine sunny day and I would have liked to be out in the garden, but even in our front garden the smell was to much for me. Just think yourselves lucky that I was not able to collect it and infuse my blog with it! Thankfully the smell has now gone. He should have some mighty good crops.

I always remember a conversation that I had with my mother-in-law, some time ago. I was telling her that I had a list of jobs waiting to be done on a rainy day. She said that they would not get done because it would not be the right sort of rain. I had never heard this before and assume that it must be an Irish idiom as both of my mother-in-law's parents were from Ireland.  But she was quite right, it never is the right sort of rain. This afternoon it was grey, miserable and cold and looked very much like rain. Ignoring the Spring cleaning, ironing, sewing, letter writing and blogging that could all be done in the dry and warm I went down to the greenhouse to sow the last of my seeds and to do the final round of the pricking out. I shall need to do some potting on but not a lot is happening in the greenhouse at the moment. The weather is too cold and wet. The plants and seedlings need more warmth and light which means sun. Not all of this rain, more of which fell whilst I was in the greenhouse. The water butts connected to the greenhouse guttering are probably the only things enjoying all of this wet weather. They are full to over flowing.