It Never Rains, But It Pours

After a particularly wet July the ground is saturated and dams are happily full. And now this...

A small river through the front garden...

...and out back, where beer-bottle cleaning has been brought to a temporary halt...

And Bakkie is stuck, the muddy ground too slippery for it to get moving. We'll have to wait for things to dry out a bit to move it, or get a tractor to pull it out.

And yet memories of drought still haunt us, so we bless the rain (if not so much the cold) and hope that the wonderful rains persist through Summer.

First sowings are already in trays - Chiles, Tomatoes and Eggplants, Cabbages and Lettuce. It's a bit early yet for direct-sown Beans, but they'll come soon enough, and there's plenty to do in preparing beds.

Anansi Rainbringer

Frequent visitors when rain is on its way, Rain Spiders prefer to find a warm, dry place to stay until rain passes. I believe that their "official" name is the Huntsman Spider, but we have always known them as the rainbringers.

They're supposedly quite poisonous, but their mandibles are not strong enough to bite us (or so I'm told.)

I find Rain Spiders to be quite chilled-out characters, and they are not aggressive if handled gently and calmly. We frequently let them hang around the house for ages after they've found their way in. The only compelling reason to move them back outside is if they're in a bad place - somewhere where they're likely to suffer injury or accidental death - like the inside of door jambs. Or if we have spider-nervous visitors. Hi, Dad. Rain Spiders grow quite large - as big as my palm, in some cases, if you include the span of their legs.

They're a more reliable forecaster of rain than the local weather services, and welcome in my house anytime! It also helps that they are voracious predators on moths and Christmas Beetles (and, probably, the tribe of Geckos that live in the roof and walls.)

Perhaps this one pictured above got a bit confused by the Butterfly ornament hanging on the wall?

My Dams Runneth Over

After a record May rainfall – 230% above average for May in the time I've been keeping records – we were really happy to see water in our dams after years of seeing nothing but sun-baked mud. The song of Frogs returned to lull us to sleep.

Even though its hopelessly too late in the season, I optimistically sowed some of the veggie beds with Carrots, Swiss Chard, Garlic, some Barley,... Funny how a little water affects one's emotions.

House dam. Overflow foreground right.

Whenever the district council get around to sending a grader to maintain our little road, we know that rain is on its way. It's the surest rain dance we know, and infinitely more reliable a predictor than the weather forecast experts. On Monday the road got graded. On Tuesday evening it started to rain at about 6p.m. And didn't stop a steady, solid downpour, until 6 the next morning. 74mm  overnight! Both our dams are overflowing gently – a thing we've not seen in perhaps 5 years, and the rainfall already exceeds the average for June (though not the mean) despite being less than one third of the way through the month.

Bottom dam (and Keira, a bit mystified by all this water.)

The first question everybody asks is, "So does this mean the drought is broken, then?" And the answer is a predictable, "Maybe."

The rain we've experience over the past month is still way off normal. The point is not "drought or not drought". The point is not "too little water vs. plenty of water vs. too much water".

The point is "abnormal weather patterns" – unpredictability. The most reliable prediction climate scientists can make is that, as we humans stress the climate further, we can expect to experience a greater number of extreme weather events, more extreme weather of greater severity. I think that our own experiences seems to bear this out. Even though the recent rain does not really count as a "severe" weather event it is certainly poking its head well up above the "norms"¹.

Even as I write the rain is falling so hard that we can barely hear ourselves shout, as it beats down on our metal roof... and we're very happy to have the water visiting again.

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[1] Whatever "norm" means in relation to weather. The very notion of climate is, itself, no more than a mathematical fiction.

Rain and Snow

Just a short update, as there's not much to tell... Brilliant rain for the month of June. Hooray! We got a wonderful 71mm - fully 65% above the mean for June. This meant that there was sufficient water in the dam to warrant re-priming the pump. Before the rain the inlet pipe was high and dry.

Now here we are only 1/3rd into July, and a rainfall of 45mm over the past couple of days means that we're already reaching the mean rainfall for July. It's plenty cold, so there's been quite heavy snow on the surrounding mountains. We first saw the snow while returning from a trip to Cape Town for the past week, and, although snow on the local mountains is not unusual for Winters, I doubt we have ever seen snow so low down the slopes! Of course it mostly melted in last-night's rains and today's follow-up sunny and warm weather, but it's still pretty early for snow around here. Small surprise for our many (many!) foreign visitors who thought of Africa as The Hot Continent!

Notwithstanding this great rain, we're still far from confident that the drought has broken. Optimistic, yes. Hopeful, always. But the fact remains that the rainfalls we're seeing still represent "abnormal" weather patterns: Winter is "usually" our dry season.

Oh, well. In hope and optimism I've planted some Swiss Chard, Carrots, Shallots and Salad Greens (Lettuce, Red Mustard and Rocket, semi-mixed-up.) All are up except the salad stuff which still needs a few more days.It's far too late for Cabbage tribe, Broad Beans or grains, so we've mostly missed out on the Winter growing season. Just holding thumbs for Spring. I guess that means I should get busy preparing Spring beds and making compost.

PS: Hard luck, Netherlands! I was rooting for you guys. Spain played brilliantly, though!

Rainish on the Plainish

At last! Some rain. 11mm on Friday evening, and another 11.5mm last night. A reasonable looking forecast for more rain on Wednesday -- should be great queueing to vote in the rain ;-) -- and maybe some more next weekend.

Does this mean the drought is finally over? The ground is still terribly dry, and the dams remain empty. Still, we remain optimistic, so I ran out and planted some stuff, just in time for last night's rain: a salad planting, and some Onions interplanted with Peas. I'm still not taking a chance with anything that's valuable or where I have very small seed-stocks. So things like Spelt and the new Chickpeas are going to have to wait until the water situation looks a little better.

I'm trying a little variation on my standard salad-planting... The normal pattern is about 1.5m of bed containing 3 rows of loose-leaf lettuces, all mixed-up, densely sown, and harvested with the sheep-shears. In between those rows go a row of Rocket and a row of Red Mustard -- we love the flavour combination. In the past I've tried to squeeze Radishes in, too, but in truth it doesn't work too well; the Radishes grow at such a different pace to the leaves that they're better off in their own space. This time I've cut down to 2 rows of Lettuces, a row each of the Rocket and Red Mustard, and put the Radishes into the middle row. We should get a better Lettuce/Rocket/Mustard ration that way, and the Radishes should just be separate enough. We're trying a Black Radish brought back from France by my parents... can't wait to taste it!

The Onions came out of their seed-tray just in time! I've only planted 3 rows so far, and put in another row each of shelling Peas ("Greenfeast") and yellow Snow Peas. The Peas should be long gone by the time the Onions want more space, and hopefully the Onions will be able to steal a little N from the Peas in their early days. It's a good theory anyway...

Its good to have some moisture on the ground again! Let's hope this is not just a flash in the pan.

A Rain Of Fish

One of my very first posts when I started this blog was about a Big Rain – the Floods of '06, a little over a year ago. Well, brace yourself for The Sequel!

After a drizzly day, yesterday, the heavens opened in the late afternoon, and have not yet shut. At about 8 this morning the rain-guage was showing a guesstimated 102mm overnight.  The scale ends at 100mm. All the dams in the area are overflowing with ummm...  interesting... results for the roads.  I think we'll be unable to get to town for a while, even after the rain stops.  And it's showing no signs of letting-up yet.

There's a river down the middle of the veggie garden, since the small dam beside the house overflows that way.  No serious harm to anything, though, since it was designed and the earth carefully shaped to channel the overflow between veg beds.  It's only the odd mole-tunnels that can cause some small washouts.  Pity the poor Moles, though.

In other parts of the region people are being helicoptered to safety. We're pretty safe; just helicopter in some Scotch and we'll be fine for quite awhile ;-)

Many more pics at Photobucket for the interested. Including the Rain of Fish.  (A bunch of freshly-dead fish lying around where they've been washed out of some dam or other. Great amusement and yummies for the Dogs!)  Sadly Photobucket seems to lack any way of putting the pictures in any kind of sensible order... :-(

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Congratulations to Kevin and Becky, and a big Welcome to Owen! We wish you much happiness, learning and fun!

When Wishes Come True

Seems like I get my wish: 36mm of rain so far, and it looks like settling in for the night.  Hooray!

Just went out to feed the Chickens (and check the rain gauge) and the ground is only just starting to get squishy-wet, so more rain will be very welcome.  Looking back in my Garden Book, the last decent rain was on 5 March -- 2½ months ago!  Too long.

Update 21 May 2007 16:43: Its bitterly cold and still bucketting down; rain should continue until tomorrow morning, and dams are starting to look a bit healthier. 

Vegetable Garden in Autumn

Finally: a little rain!  After weeks without a drop, we finally got 8mm of rain yesterday.  Not nearly enough, and things are looking a bit grim.  We have not had "decent" rain since March -- only a few half-arsed showers in April. To my mind, anything less than 15mm does more harm than good, and a rain only really qualifies as "decent" when it hits 25mm or more.

The dam that provides irrigation water is nearly empty, and, unless we getgood rains soon -- at least 30 or 40mm -- I shall have to investigate ways to pump water from the Big Dam at the bottom of the farm.  Renting a pump isvery expensive; local equipment-hire places demand R300 and up for a day's pump-hire.  You can buy the damn thing for around R1200!

On the upside, the year's Garlic (pictured left, though the plants are barely visible) is doing really well, and I managed to get a full bed of Onions transplanted before the rain, so they're all looking good, and starting to stand upright again after their move.  Broad beans and Lentils haven't shown-up yet (no surprise there, though), but Turnips (Golden Globe), Carrots, Beets and Mangels have!  I've never grown giant Beets before, and am mainly doing so now to get experience with them, and to save some seed as a bit of "future-proofing" insurance.  Broccoli (Early Purple) and Cauliflower also got transplanted just before the rain, so they're also quite happy.  All of these are Winter crops around here, as are Peas (still to be planted.)  Lettuce is an ever-ongoing story, here; the only time of year we have trouble with Lettuce is in December and January when temperatures get high enough to inhibit germination of Lettuce seed, though shade-cloth over the flats does help a bit.

I've also put in a few Potatoes.  People around here give me funny looks for planting Winter Potatoes, but they have been reasonably successful (if not terribly prolific) on the few occasions I've done so in the past.  It means that come Springtime, we're eating homegrown new Potatoes at a time of year when the shops are charging more for them than their weight in gold.  If I can free-up a bit more space -- and I think I can -- I can perhaps get another 1/2-dozen plants in.  All good provided the Porcupine doesn't find them!

All we need now is a lot more rain!

Big(ish) Rain

Completely unpredicted by the bloody-useless weather service, here we are getting a healthy dose of rain.  Very glad about it, too!  I'm even starting to think that I should go and empty the rain gauge before it overflows.

Of course this means I'll have Tomatoes splitting left, right and centre...

Update: 48mm since last night, and counting...

Cold Front

Looks like a cold front on its way - and fast, too.  Good.  We need a decent rain.

So outside to chop some firewood - on the optimistic assumption that the wind won't be too strong for a fire.  (Our chimney doesn't work worth a damn in wind, and ends up sucking all the smoke back into the house.)  Need a new axe-handle; the handle has split lengthwise inside the axe-head, so the head is wedged none-too-securely. Then my chopping-block split.  Oh well, more firewood, says the Optimist.

Just one of Those days.