Desperate times

 

It is still here, even though I keep thinking that it has gone. When will we return to normal? Flashing blue blaring lights are becoming a usual sight on our road. The heat waves keep on coming and although sometimes I think it must rain, it never does. The grass is so dry now that it easily catches light and that is why we are seeing so many red fire engines streaking by.

The gardens and fields look dead, but they are not. Somehow our new trees are surviving. The ones we planted as soon as we came have got their roots down and are quite strong, the more recent ones have lost some leaves but are still holding on. I remember in 1976 looking up at the never-ending blue sky and wondering if it would end. It did and we had rain in September.

Some plants seem to think that it is September already. We went on a country walk yesterday and the hedges were full of berries. There were red hawthorn, wild rose and guelder rose berries weighing down the shrubs so much that they were almost touching the parched ground. My cousin tells me that her apple tree is so weighed down with its massive apple crop that they too are pulling the tree down on bent branches. Are the plants in shock trying to make sure they have a good chance of seedlings next spring?

Food from our garden is not as abundant as we expected and we had an unusual but welcome gift this week from a friend. She delivered a small bag of new potatoes just dug up from her own garden. They were smaller than usual because of the drought, but we were cooking for visitors and could share our good luck. We used to grow our own at the cottage but here we have mostly stuck to green vegetables happily growing amongst flowers in the borders.

When I was at my friend’s house she had an unusual gift too. She knew it was arriving and kept looking out for the postman coming down the road. When she saw him through the window, she jumped up to greet him at the door. She held the brown paper parcel. It was from her mother and inside was a bundle of fresh green runner beans. There was a note that said she had more than she could use in her garden and so parcelled them up yesterday in time for my friend’s dinner today150 miles away.

I see that the garden centres have been left with unsold bright, blousy annuals. They are selling off trays of them at 50p each. A bargain if you water them.

(Taken from my column in The Star)