It’s a blue day today – not blue skies – a blue feeling day. It’s rained every day now for four weeks. Here in the Pas-de-Calais, unlike some areas, we do not have a hosepipe ban and the way things are going we will need to invest in a small boat to get about!
The seeds that I’ve managed to sow are drowning. The cats are sodden. The dogs are wet and smell doggy. The chickens are soggy and fed up. The cows that belong to the farmer next door and in the field at the bottom of the garden are desperately seeking shelter under the trees. Only the geese and ducks are revelling in the rain.
I’m getting pretty fed up with it now too. I’d like a bit of sunshine or at least a couple of dry days. Every time there’s a break of a few hours in the rain, I rush out and try to sow a few more seeds or plant up something I’ve been growing in the green house. I’ve got a stack of potato tubers to get planted still and it’s getting a bit late for that sort of thing though the ones I did a few weeks ago are coming up fast and strong. Some of the other plants seem to be loving it too, bluebells, aquilegias and some alpine strawberry seeds I sowed in an old wine barrel last year are amongst those that seem to be thriving in the wet and warming up atmosphere.
It makes me wonder though how bad it is for the farmers if I’m struggling. I read that there could be a potato shortage this year because of all the rain we’ve had. This time last year we were praying for rain it was so hot and dry and there were predictions of a potato shortage because there wasn’t enough rain.
I am predicting that we’ll have a good summer in the north of France. I think that come the end of May we’ll have blue skies, sunshine and it’ll be an old fashioned summer just as this has been an old fashioned wet spring.
In the meantime I’m off to put my wellies on and splash about the garden checking for slugs and snails on my newly planted baby lettuces and cabbages. This rain brings them out in droves and despite the copious amount of bird life, moles and hedgehogs, the pests that eat my veg are proliferating in this weather.
A bientôt from rainy Pas-de-Calais
Janine
