Drought conditions

Marigold said:
If your water is extremely soft, LadyA, then it's the opposite of alkaline and will have a very low Ph. I bet you can grow lots of ericaceous, peat-loving plants that could only exist in pots in our chalky garden!
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Ah yes. I do remember (vaguely!) that when we got the water tested years ago, they remarked that the ph was very low, but within the acceptable level for drinking water. And yes, my camelias and hydrangeas always did very well here! Now though, my hydrangeas are dead. :cry: I'm hoping they will recover, if I cut them down in the autumn. And by next year, I hope to have enough stored water that I can water them too!
 
We live in East Kent, where our water is very hard & chalky (picture the white cliffs of Dover: that's the kind of ground that our water is naturally filtered through). It's natural mineral water on tap and means that very few people around here suffer from osteoporosis.

Soft, naturally acidic water like Lady A's is the opposite- it tastes sweeter but over time will attack metals rather than furring them up.

I guess it's what you're used to, but my in-laws have a water softener & when we visit, how ever little shower gel I use, my skin feels slimy & I struggle to rinse it off & feel clean.

On the other hand, a visitor to a local B&B slated it on Trip Advisor because there was limescale in the kettle!! If you've used a kettle here once after descaling it, it'll have limescale in it...
 
Aw, she's lovely, Rick!

Now, I have NO water! :roll: :roll:
Yesterday morning, I went to the garage for something, and AAarghh!!! Water all over the floor???!! There's a slight leak where the pipe from the pressure vessel meets the pipe from the well! Yes, talk of the devil - the fitting is leaking!! So I had to turn the pump off. And wouldn't you just KNOW it! I was having 10 people over to lunch yesterday, as it was mum's 60th wedding anniversary! Dad died 17 years ago, but, like me, mum still feels her marriage is something to celebrate, even if one of them is no longer here, so we always do something for the day. And as 60 years is a bit special, we had a family get together & lunch here. I managed with the several 5 litre bottles of water that I normally keep on hand anyway. But, goodness, I couldn't prevail on people to stop flushing the toilet every time! Each time someone went to the loo, I said "Only flush it if absolutely necessary, because I've got no water at the moment." and they'd say "Ok." and next thing I'd hear the loo flushing! :x They are all on public water supplies of course. I washed all the dishes in boiled bottled water, emptied that into a bucket, and then used the bucket last night to "flush" the loo before I went to bed.
Still, water or no, we had a lovely meal, a cold buffet of salads, cheeses, cold chicken & ham, bread, a spinach, feta & spring onion & egg pie in filo pastry which I believe is called Spanokopita and is one of my fave dishes, and dau brought an enormous cake for dessert. And, knowing that I can't have refined sugar or alcohol, my sister in law brought me a bottle of Shloer Bubbly, a lovely sparkling rose grape juice! I normally don't like anything fizzy, but I have to say, this was very nice for an "occasion". Might get a couple of bottles for Christmas.

The water system repair man has promised to try and get to me this afternoon. Although he said "you're living alone now though, so you won't be too bad." (How did he know I live alone now???) They are brilliant when you can get them, but they are the only ones in this area, so are always run off their feet! So, you can get them out for emergency repairs like this. But not to do routine maintenance. Which drives me bananas! And they never answer the phone, you always just have to leave a message and wait for them to call you back. Which, in fairness, if it's an emergency and you are without water, they do, very quickly. Hmm. Maybe when they are here, I will try and pin them down to doing something about my steriliser, which hasn't worked for a few years, because it needs a new UV bulb.

Mind you, I'm just glad I did go to the garage yesterday morning. Sometimes, this time of year when I'm not lighting the stove, weeks would go by, and I wouldn't need to go in there! Could have burned out the pump if I hadn't found the leak quickly!
 
That's bad luck LadyA and I hope the pipe is fixed quickly. We've taken the decision to switch to bottled water for drinking as the water filter blocks very quickly and doesn't get the pesticides out anyway- the difference in taste of my tea is incredible!

We had our forecast downpour and the water butts are full. Problem is there isn't much left to water! Hailstones the size of marbles with a few the size of golf balls has devastated the vegetable plot. Fortunately the potatoes are long out and the onions came out yesterday but the courgettes are shredded and the beef tomatoes have taken a few direct hits. The hail stones literally cut branches off everything and our plane tree, which we rely on for shade in Summer, is a bit leaf bare. The remaining hay has been flattened so it's going to be difficult to cut, our planted pretty wild flowers have gone, we've lost a lot of fruit off the trees and more storms due.
 
Oh dear, LadyA and Chris - more tales of disaster, so sorry to hear of your problems. I've been watching the weather forecasts to get some idea how our friends on here might be doing - I look up at the top to see what Shetland and HenGen might be getting, then watch the depression clouds moving over Ireland and hope they're bringing some rain for you, LadyA. Neither area is ever mentioned specifically, and sometimes on the weather maps the weather seems to be entirely confined to N. Ireland, with none at all south of the border, as if it was a non-place, in limbo, terra incognita, like on mediaeval maps of the known world - instead of one of our main EU partners, for the time being at least.
 
Sorry to hear about your troubles; I think flushing the loo is a reflex action for most people Lady A but why do things always happen at the worst possible moment? I know the damage big hailstones can do Chris. We had a storm in Suffolk with golf ball hail. Cars with front and back screens smashed; car bodywork looking like someone had hit it with a ballpein hammer; PVC conservatories roofs smashed (a lower of hailstones first chilled it, then the big one went straight through!); local car service and showroom had thousands of pounds of damage both to new cars in the showroom and customers cars in the workshop because the roof was smashed. Acres of cereal crops were flattened as well. What was really weird was that friends living in a village a mile away as the crow flies didn't get a single hailstone - but the fields opposite their, just across a narrow road were under inches of the stuff! It was as though someone had drawn a line down the road. Our car was more or less OK because it was parked under a sycamore - and was completely plastered with leaves!
 
The repair people called to say that they can't get here until tomorrow. They've been called to emergencies at a couple of dairy farms that have been left with no water supply, which is fair enough. At least I don't have a herd of thirsty cattle, and a milking parlour that needs keeping clean!

Gosh, Chris, that's pretty devastating! Hail can be very destructive. My sister (in Australia) used to live in a house with a steel roof, and they had such a bad hail storm once, that they had to have their roof replaced! She said it was destroyed, with dents and bashes, the hailstones were so big. In the area where they lived then, she said Insurance companies would pay a first claim for hailstone damage to a roof, but then they wouldn't cover you for that again, because it was so common in the area!

We had not so much rain, as mist yesterday. But it misted all day, which was nice! It's nowhere near enough, but it's a start. And my diverter kits arrived today, to put on the downpipes! Hurray!
 
Couple of days of mizzle. Don’t know how deep it’s gone but more substantial rain due next weekend. We’ve basked in about six weeks of sunshine, sheeps feet as sound as a pound, chickens out every day dust bathing. But glad the drought is ending.
 
RICK - I love the photo of Lulu, what a very pretty hen :-)

Tonight - there was a small shower here, approx 5 minutes long. I have never belly laughed so much, as Miss Muffet was sprinting around the lawn, as if a monster was after her. The others ran straight for cover, under the shrubs. None of them have seen rain before, it must be so odd for them.
 
We were lucky the hailstones were not bigger. Last week a village had 130 roofs damaged and one was completely smashed and these are the big French roof tiles, not the little Rosemarys we had in England. Our car suffered lots of minor dents, despite being parked under an Elm tree, which can only be seen by looking across the bonnet and roof. Fortunately it's an old car whose next great adventure will probably be to the scrap yard as the MOT has been made considerably harder to pass this year.

Annoyingly I completely forgot to cover the tomatoes with the scaffolding debris netting we use as wind break for the chicken enclosure. It would probably have stopped any damage at all.

Hope you all get the rain you need.
 
I too am sorry to hear all your woes, they sound pretty serious. I had heard about the hail in France wiping out grape harvests. Everything is calm here, not super hot, not super dry, just very pleasant which is just as well after last year; but the weather globally is certainly extremely topsy turvy, I still can't believe its been hotter in Wales, Ireland and Scotland than here. I hope all your water issues are sorted out quickly, and you recover from the hail, Chris. I have found your water solutions and treatment discussions very interesting, its helpful to store up this knowledge for the future.
 
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