Rain at Last

After around 5-6 weeks of rain-less days, when almost every day seemed to be cloudless, sunny and very warm in the afternoons, leading to the comments in my last couple of posts about almost drought conditions, things changed dramatically yesterday.
After a very warm Monday afternoon when people were as usual, out walking in their summer clothes, shorts and T shirts even, we got up yesterday to dark skies, steady rain and a big drop in temperature. That remained the case for most of the day and at times even, a burst of the central heating was needed to take the chill off of the house. Lawns and flower beds that had been rock hard and cracking up begun to ooze water by the evening. Garden water butts re-filled and over-flowed and the poor Blackbirds, that had been struggling for a few weeks to get any worms out of the ground for their chicks, suddenly looked rejuvenated.
Early this Wednesday morning as I write this, we still have dark skies, light rain and cold temperatures, with heavier rain forecast during the day. Unfortunately this year's weather seems to be coming in binges - we had the endless and record wet winter, followed by this recent endless dry spell, hopefully it won't mean that this current wet weather isn't set in for a month or so now.

What it does mean is that the farmer close to the reserve, who last week was sowing peas into dust dry ground, causing me to comment on how does he expect them to germinate, will no doubt be feeling quite smug today. On the reserve itself, one piece of concern will be for any newly hatched Lapwing chicks. A cold and rainy day is not good for those small balls of fluff, if they remain wet and cold for long periods of time they will often die.
I'm just about to set off for the reserve and wellie boots and a coat were the last thing on my mind this time last week.