The Rainbow, the Rain, and the Day the Allotment Finally Had a Proper Drink
I want to talk about Thursday. But before I get to Thursday, I need to tell you about Wednesday night, because without Wednesday night, Thursday doesn't make half as much sense. Wednesday evening, the weather forecast had been muttering about rain. Not just a shower, they said. Proper rain. The kind we need, they said. Well. I have been gardening long enough to know that weather forecasters and allotment holders have a complicated relationship, somewhere between cautious optimism and mild ongoing betrayal. They mean well. I'm sure they do. But we've had quite a week of storms up to that point — short, sharp, biblical-looking things that roll in with tremendous drama, rattle the shed roof, drop a bit of hail on the courgettes as if personally offended by them, and then disappear again in ten minutes flat. The ground barely notices. You walk up the plot half an hour later and it's as dry as a Lincolnshire joke. Which is very dry indeed. So when Wednesday night came and...
