stormy weather!!

[LadyA]

Gosh, isn't it hard to believe that only a couple of months ago, we were so desperate for rain?? Talk about a feast or a famine! We've had some quite stormy conditions here, and lakes ful of rain falling! The place is awash!

One of my water barrells (an old one which has a slight leak, so only gets half full), I found on its side, out by the front gate the other morning, after a storm! The wind had torn it from the down pipe (thankfully, didn't damage the pipe!), even though it was half full of water, so must have been heavy! I found the stand it had been on had blown in the other direction. Fortunately, that was the extent of the damage here.

Hope everyone is well and not washed out!

 

[Hen-Gen]

Bit blowy here too but the constant southerly winds are warm so the grass is still bright green rather than the lifeless, wind scorched brown that we expect by this time of year.
However my copse is now leafless and ready for winter. Even so a neighbour was putting out cat food yesterday for a hedgehog.
Whilst climate change is the number one issue then if this is how it’s going to manifest itself here (after a brilliant summer) then something about clouds and silver linings springs to mind.

 

[Marigold]

However my copse is now leafless and ready for winter. Even so a neighbour was putting out cat food yesterday for a hedgehog.

I read that as 'my corpse is now lifeless and ready for winter.' Glad a second reading was reassuring.

Down here in Hampshire, our hedgehogs are still stoking up with the food I leave for them every night. The dish is in a covered feeder box and I know it's hedgehogs because they often poo on the plate to say thank you. The hedgehogs squeeze through a low hole in the rotten wood round the base of our summer house, and i think they hibernate, and breed in the summer, in the dry, warm safe space under the floor. Yesterday evening, when Poppy was out for her last wee, she immediately spotted a satisfyingly fat hog under the bird feeders. She got so excited that all thoughts of the aim of her mission went out of her head, so in the hope of calming her down I had to take her down the road instead - where a cat shot out of the hedge right in front of her. It was some while before we all got to bed!

 

[bigyetiman]

Our lake was still depressingly low until yesterday morning at just after 6am the heavens opened in something akin to a monsoon for an hour or more, and everywhere was awash, the brook overflowed nicely into the lake which is now full. The hens took a somewhat dim view of this change in weather. Still ridiculously warm. By 10am it was blazing sunshine and we had a nice stroll to town for the remembrance parade and service