Since the last Blog in mid-April, we have had just over 220mm of rain, a lot! It was spread over the whole of this period, but with a peak from a series of heavy thunderstorms in the last 10 days. There was a particularly violent one on May 28th, when 44mm fell in just over an hour (there was probably more than this, because at one point it was falling so heavily that the opening of the rain gauge wouldn’t have been able to cope with it all). The storms, which usually occur at the end of a very warm afternoon, seem to have become a fixture, and are the result of a high pressure system which is stuck over the British Isles, blocking the depression over the whole of southern France.

The rain suits me just fine, because the garden is at last getting moisture at depth, something which it didn’t have for the whole of last year. And the result is clear to see. Suddenly, trees and shrubs appear to have put on a spurt (see photos below) and everything is looking vibrantly green and healthy. And in many cases this has coincided with the amount of time which trees planted two or three years ago need to really get their root systems established and to start showing proper growth.

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