A brief life in a wet world

Walking Wednesday: 3.8km

Walking Thursday:     3.9km

Walking Friday:          3.8km

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There's a summer postcard on sale here in the shops which is a cartoon of a holidaymaker huddling behind a standing stone as horizontal rain sweeps across. The caption reads "En Bretagne j'etais arroser" - something like "I've been hosed down in Brittany".

Our climate here is generally a little warmer than in Hampshire, we are usually a couple of degrees above the temperature in southern Britain but we do seem to get more frequent spells of two or three days of continual driving rain than I remember. We had one this week, it rained more or less continuously for 72 hours:

We had re-started re-jointing work on the Grange West Wall but that came to a shuddering halt for the duration of the rain: 

When it finally stopped on Sunday morning we had a brief spell of watery sun and, walking round the garden to survey the damage I found a remarkable sight by the pond. The rain had filled the pond to the level of the overflow and on a reed bunch the dragonfly larvae had crawled out of the water to hatch, I counted six of them.

One had hatched already and was warming up on a reed:

There's a slightly sad end to this story. About 5 minutes after taking this picture I noticed a starling eying up the dragonfly and soon it was in its beak heading over the hedge to feed a family.

Short life ....