This dry spell has been going on for months, and now we are all used to it. It’s been over three months since we saw any reasonable amount of rain – even for a dry region like ours, this is definitely out of the ordinary. Local weather forecasters have said that we have had 1% of the expected rainfall for the area in the last six months, and are apologising for the lack of rain in the forecasts in the same way they were apologising for the constant rain we had over last winter.
One consequence is that the local fields are susceptible to dropped cigarettes, sunlight focussed through glass bottles and arson. One spark, one idiot with a disposable barbecue set, and the straw goes up. The breeze is enough to take out the rest of the grass, the dried out wheat crop, the haybales stacked in a corner, the combiner parked there – and the houses nearby. Most of a small village in Norfolk was destroyed by a fire that spread from the nearby fields within minutes, and three fields local to us have burned for a couple of hours, leaping the road and carrying on in the next field over.
Some of our trees have shed their leaves as if it were October. I think some of the rowans and the cherry tree we planted to mark our thirtieth anniversary have died, and a whole row of beech in a neighbour’s garden has gone brown. Beech are shallow rooted trees, so no wonder – over the last eight years we have been planting hornbeam to replace dead beech hedging, as it is more drought tolerant, but ‘tolerant’ is just delaying the day when the lack of water proves too much to survive.
We’ve all been asked to use less water, though our water authority has held back on imposing a hosepipe ban. ‘Using less water’ used to mean taking a shower instead of a bath, but now that most people only use the bath-tub for scrubbing down the family dog after a muddy winter walk, the advice has changed to ‘limit the time you spend in the shower’. Don’t use a hose to water the garden, fill paddling pools or ponds, wash the car. Fill dishwashers and washing machines to the top before setting them running.
I can see the time coming when we’ll be asked to stop using appliances like dishwashers and washing machines at all during times of drought, unless we’re caring for people who are ill, elderly or very young. It’s been suggested that eastern England might become virtually uninhabitable through almost permanent drought, though you can remind me of that when the rain starts this autumn and makes the ground squelch underfoot by Christmas.
We’re still watering the polytunnel and the veg plot, but less than we were in spring. Enough has come out of the veg patch to make a ten minute plod around with watering cans enough to keep the plants thriving. Our shopping bill has gone up enough to make this food a real moneysaver, worth the water. Not successful across all plants – no surviving carrots or parsnips this year, though kale, courgettes and potatoes are doing better than last year and the bean plants are waiting their turn. Plenty of cucumbers, and the peppers and aubergines are threatening to give us a decent crop. If I have to give up a couple of showers a week to spare a can of water for these plants, I’ll do it. Thank Evans for Zoom meetings – on Zoom, no-one can smell your armpits, to paraphrase the Alien tagline.
We’re not filling the pond – most of the surface is covered by lily leaves and crispodea fronds, and that will hopefully slow the rate of evaporation. The birds are hopping straight into the shallowest part, rather than perching on the rocks, and one bird took a long splashy bath while balanced on a lily pad. It’s about a foot shallower than at the height of the rainy season. Tough to see it, but the fish are coping and it has another foot to go before they may be in any danger. I keep telling myself it takes two good thunderstorms to add a foot of water to the pond, but it is still hard to see the pond in this state. I’m moving the planted tubs down a level to give them the depth they need to survive, and hoping it will rain soon. If it doesn’t, the fish may find themselves rescued into the bath-tub. And then we really won’t be tempted to swap the shower for the bath ourselves.
Julia Chalkley 