The Flâneur Husband and I went up to the garden Friday afternoon after work, and this is what met us:
Our summerhouse had more or less turned into a moated castle, only without the crenelated towers and the drawbridge. The latter would have been useful, since we were both in our city shoes… Mine were leather, so I traversed the lawn with difficulty and returned – wearing my wellies – with a pair of clogs for the Flâneur Husband so he wouldn’t have to wreck his suede (NOT blue) shoes.
The neighbours told us that on Thursday the area had 80mm of rain, which is a lot more rain than falls in the average month of July, and since this has been a wet summer the ground was saturated and there was no other way this could have turned out.
Needless to say The Puddles were hard to spot, since they had merged with the lawn in that corner of the garden to form a Great Lake – or at least a garden version thereof.
I was somewhat annoyed with this, as this was not what we had expected to see on that sunny afternoon, but the Flâneur Husband seemed absolutely put out by it and very worried about whether it would damage any plants and how long it would take to subside. I, on the other hand, have seen flooding like this in the garden several times the first year we had the garden – before we had the drain installed – so I was pretty sure the plants would stand up to it with no problems, but still…
My poor dahlias were standing in 3 inches of water, and I’m pretty sure dahlias aren’t naturally aquatic plants…
Still, after some food and a glass of wine – and the turning-on of the drain pump to pump water out into the stream behind the house – the mood lifted and we had a lovely evening after all, taking advantage of the photo-op to take some pictures of how flâneurs deal with a flood:
Flâneur Husband
Flâneur Gardener
-A glass of Chardonnay and a leisurely stroll through the garden, even if it had to be in 3 inches of water! And yes, I like to don some tweed in the garden from time to time as the picture shows.
The next morning, though, the lake had all but vanished from our plot. The Puddles were still merged into a single pond-sized puddle, but the lawn was visible and the ground was generally just boggy and wet, rather than flooded.
It was a sight for sore eyes to wake up to a garden where wellies wasn’t de rigeur, and even the dahlias were now on dry (i.e. boggy) ground:
The upside to this flooding is that hoards of slugs seem to have drowned in the water; sadly, though, loads of earth worms also perished.
Today, Sunday, the garden looks wonderful – and dry! The Flâneur Husband mowed most of the lawn today before heading back to town, and Idid the rest this afternoon. There’s laundry drying in the sun, a mild wind is keeping the temperature in the sun bearable and I’ve put away the tweeds in favour of a pair of swimming trunks and a chair in the sunny courtyard.
(I might not air my dirty laundry in public, but I don’t mind putting my clean laundry on the Internet!)
Amazing transformation…the little rain that has fallen doesn’t even permeate the soil…I would love to see some puddles again. Love the tweeds!
The drought in North America is worrying; it seems a hike in food prices is a likely consequence globally, and of course your warm weather has also reached as far as Greenland where there has been above-freezing temperatures on the ice cap and huge chunks of glaciers are falling off into the ocean… In that perspective my temporarily wet garden is definitely a minor detail.
I hope you get a proper soaking soon; it seems we are set for some more summery – i.e. dry and sunny – weather – over the next week, so I’m crossing my fingers that this will leave the rain free to cross the Atlantic and hit your garden for a while.
Apparently the high pressure that has been sat over Greenland has been the result of the jetstream not being where it should and as a result America has had drought and the UK, and it seems Denmark, have had floods. Apparently the jetstream has moved a little which is why I’m now in a sundress basking in sunshine.
A guy in my village has been recording the rainfall amounts for the village for the last 20 years and apparently in the first half of June we’d had a quarter of the annual rainfall!
Your drain is remarkable and I can see why you had it installed. Hopefully with the dry spell everything should dry out quickly enough.
The freaky weather that seems to be happening on a more regular basis is more than a little worrying. And, as long as some people would prefer to believe the UK government has been dabbling in cloud seeding rather than it being attributed to climate change I feel fairly pessimistic about the future. But not wanting to end on such a miserable note, I’m loving that tweed suit and welly combo, and the dahlia bed is looking great.
Everything was perfectly fine in the garden when I left it on Monday morning, so there’s no harm done – except to the earth worms…
But the weather does seem to have been set to “randomise” these years. We’ve always had wet summers in Denmark and the UK, but there should be some sunny and dry spells in-between.
-And EVERYTHING goes with wellies, no?
What a shock to come home to! But you both handled it so well. Yes I think you might start a new look in those boots with tweed, very nice, and the wine glass an essential accessory! Hopefully the water was harder on the slugs than it was on the earthworms.
I’ve been trying to start a new look of tweeds and boots for the past decade, but so far with little effect…Still, I persevere, and even if it won’t become trendy it is definitely a comfortable and practical attire. (And the wine glass is perhaps the most practical accessory ever invented.)