
The weather forecasters seem a nice bunch of people. Inoffensive, eager to please. That's the trouble, really. They're eager to please townies who think we ought to have sunshine all day, every day, with never a hint of rain. So they refer to the prospect of rain with words like "threat", as though it's something we all dread.
The long term forecast is that we're going to have a hot, dry summer, which means that gardeners, growers and farmers will be struggling to keep their crops irrigated. Asparagus growers are already reduced to cutting spears once every other day, since the dry weather has restricted growth.
My garden is heavy clay. A friend has dug three new veg patches for me, but until it rained I couldn't do anything with them. It was like gardening in concrete. Every time a weatherman or woman mentioned a "threat" of rain, I got more and more irritated. So far, all we've had are a few piddling little showers. The water butts haven't filled up, and the ground is still hard.
Where do these sunshine addicts think their fruit and vegetables come from? Well, OK, so some come thousands of miles by air, but the home-grown stuff? And why has the British landscape been so lush and green, until now?
As I write, there are some lovely thick
cumulus congestus clouds overhead, full of thousands of gallons of water. They're just teasing. They'll drift off and dump it all somewhere else, maybe over a town, where people with grumble about the rain, while the weatherwoman (or man) on the regional news will tell us that it's a lovely sunny day.