I've been waiting for a special reason to post this, my 100th blog entry! What better way to celebrate than by reporting the first good rain of the season. Literally, all my bowls runneth over! And the birds that use them every day are diving and dipping in a particularly carefree way. They too no doubt know the rains have come.
The distortion inside this bowl is the effect of rain pouring down, filling it and every other garden receptacle that until now I'd been topping up by hand. And even though we only got 33ml, this rainfall on Saturday had a serious feeling to it. It came down hard and fast. Now, two days later we are sweltering in the kind of temperatures that usually precede a storm, so I'm hopeful there's more rain to come. In any case, the garden has been completely refreshed and the dust of winter washed off all surfaces.
I walked around the house to admire the dripping scenes from all sides. And after the storm, both Allen and I went out to enjoy a strange pastel sunset. I was too awestruck by the pale blue and tangerine streaks to think of photographing it, but I doubt the camera could have done it justice.Only those of you who have relied on rainwater for your household needs can appreciate how much it means to feel the first rain of the season on your face. When I lived in cities I never even knew what time of year the rains came – or if there was a time when it rained more than at other times.
Now I can smell the rain coming. And if I have any doubt, I can walk down into the paddock and see if the ants are building up mounds of soil at the entrace to their holes. I'm not sure why they do that, but how high they build gives a pretty good idea how much rain we'll get. No matter where I live in future, I'll never take rain for granted again. Nor should we.
3 comments:
Congratulations on your 100th post!
You give a great description of another kind of life where you count every drop of water. We get an average of 14 in. of moisture a year but we have cool temperatures so less evaporation.
Red, your 14in is rain, right? But I guess you'd have to include snow in your precipitation totals, as the melting snow probably gives a more important source of hydration in your climate. Once or twice during our rainy season (Nov to Feb usually) we will have a day or two when we get 12in of rain in a single day. Two years ago the rainy season started early (October) and finished late (April) and in those 7 months we had almost 9 feet of rain (2760mm). In December alone that year we had 29in. Needless to say there was massive flooding here in north-east Australia - include a large amount of our capital city. Luckily, we're up in the hills so we escaped the floods. But we were marooned for a few days as all roads down to nearby towns and highways were cut off. So you see, we usually have no trouble keeping our 10,000gal rainwater tank topped up during the summer, and we just have to make it last through the rest of the year, when monthly falls will average just 2 or 3 inches.
At home in Saskatchewan we always measured every mm of rain. 350 mm (incl. snow) is a good year if rains come at the right time.
There is something so wonderful about spring rains. We have fall rains to endure for a bit though it could snow any day now.
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