We had an email from friends down under who run a parallel universe on an Australian smallholding, commenting on our dry spell. They have proper water shortages there, and green is an unusual summer colour for them in the land down under, its pretty and green here, we are falling into autumn but theres a lot of verdant hue around. So after grovelling to the Technohermit for forgeting his dinner yesterday I took Rocky and Spotty the wrong way round Worzel Wood. To get there we had to cross a swamp, that wasn't there, and clear several styles without any on my part and a lot of noise and theatricals from Rocky. The picture above might look like Spotty running hell for leather down a country trail.....
....it is in fact the bed of the local river, which at this point above is usually three foot or so deep, a concrete ford allows forestry vehicles access to the woods while the wooden effort allows the three billy goats gruff safe passage from bothersome trolls.
Its so dry that theres no mud, plants have even started to grow where fishes should be at school. Bear in mind we had torrential rain for several hours this morning, our trusty high tech rain gauge (a coffee cup on the wall) showed over an inch of the wet stuff had fallen, so heavy in fact that I took Vic to work (I'm no fair weather walker!) so my paperwork didnt get soggy. Its raining just as hard now, but a fair bit more will have to fall to get the river flowing again. The Oracle who has lived here almost a lifetime can only remember two occasions the rivers been dry, 1976 was the last, the famous drought year.
No sign of the Trolls though, perhaps they've moved to the Stanner Rocks, that looks like good troll country.
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