Warm sunshine and Soft rain

2012 and all that

just can't get the help nowdays

I wish! Nature it is said usually compensates, but this is damned ridiculous. After last years abundance of rain we now have clear blue skies with not a drop of the wet stuff in sight. The chalky clay of our allotment has done its 'thing' and turned from the sticky mud of winter to rock hard, with cracks. Not that we are short of water by any means as sweet clear mains water is piped to the allotment courtesy of the council for which we are charged accordingly the following year.

 

 

 

 

 

The water is piped to four stand pipes set equidistant across the allotment and each stand pipe has a large water tank to dunk our water cans in. It is convenient and so far I've not found it tiring, using two 10ltr cans to keep me balanced I find watering my 10 rods takes less than an hour. The problem is that the pipe supplying the water is too small, so if all taps are ON the pressure drops for each tap in the line, and the last one barely gets a trickle coming out. So it very much relies  on ensuring that the tanks are kept full.

 

Now just suppose that someone wants to use a hose! or even two!! With 4 stand pipes and 75 plots this can, and does, restrict the amount of water available for the rest. Woe betide if another turns on a tap to fill the tank as the huffy sprayer bares down on them demanding 'fair shares for all'. This has happened as I scrapped the bottom of two tanks and having finished, left the site, the sprayer still hard at it, as they were when I arrived.

 

I have never understood why when you are growing vegetables you would also want to water the weeds, the path, the grass, the sky. The last bits not true, but maybe the process is so mesmerising that they sort of reach a state of Zen, an inner place to contemplate the world and its mysteries. When on the other hand delivering the water to the plant you want to grow makes so much more sense. Ah, ever the pragmatist. Such a dull boy.

 

The funny thing is that a sprayer never connects cause and effect. If the tank is empty because they can not be filled owing to the hose being on the tap it is therefore not their fault that the tank is empty as they have been using the hose and not the water can. What a long sentence! makes me breathless just reading it. I have lately been reading a book by Roy Lacy of his time on the Cowpasture (that's the books name) allotments just outside Felixstowe. The average annual rainfall in East Anglia is a miserly 20.5'' and they had no water on site at all! Makes you think doesn't it.

 

The weatherman, or should that be person? informs us that the jet stream has shifted to the south and thunderstorms are due. That's not to say we in the S.E. will get any but it would sure be appreciated.