Mud Mud Glorious Mud.

There’s nothing quite like it for cooling the blood. Well the kids had fun with it anyway, after the downpour we had yesterday.

Ahhh, it was so good to get some decent rain. It has been so hot and dry lately, the grass was really starting to get crunchy underfoot.

Sometimes we don’t see the rain coming in our little valley until it is right upon us. We’re often sent into a scurry, dashing around collecting various bits of clothing or toys that the kids have left strewn about, or bringing in the washing or other such things.

Yesterday we found ourselves removing lights from the trees at the last minute. Well, we’d had a party at New Year and we hadn’t got around to getting them down yet, but there’s no motivation like an approaching storm. They probably would have been alright, but I got a bee in my bonnet about it (how many clichés are you allowed to use in one post?) and we got them down.

The other issue for us with the oncoming rain was that we are waiting for a new tank to arrive and had already disconnected and removed the old tank. So half of the water our roof collects had nowhere to go and was going to end up on the ground beside the house. So we needed to attach some extra pipes to direct water further away from the house. But first, I was determined to collect some rainwater for drinking…as our remaining tank is not very clean and we are not drinking its water (we’ve been buying spring water).

So there we were, in the pouring rain, holding a pipe into a bucket collecting as much water as we could and transferring into it various other water containers. We harvested about 100 litres before we ran out of vessels to store it in. Then we had to let the rest of the water flow out onto the grass, towards a couple of trees.

In the meantime, on the other side of the house, the gutters were overflowing and water was running under the house in a steady stream. I could see the gutters were clogged with leaves, but I couldn’t do anything about it, as our ladder recently broke (finally – it was nearly as old as me) and there was no way to get onto the roof. So I raced around grabbing old sheets of corrugated iron and leant them against the house so the overflow would hit it and run onto the grass instead of back under the house. Honestly, sometimes I feel like a character in a comedy skit, trying to do things without the right tools or equipment, with some pretty unusual outcomes. Oh well, whatever works.....

So anyway, I got that situation under control, and managed to relax and enjoy the rain for a minute. I was saturated anyway, and it had been so hot even the rain was warm. It felt so nice on the skin. But after all that, it suddenly stopped. So then it was time for puddle play and a bit of mud slinging, although that ended up with somebody getting an eyeful!

The frogs are also rejoicing in the wet and were out in full force in the evening croaking up a deafening chorus. Here’s a sound byte of how they sounded outside my bedroom window.

They were like that most of the night. The deeper croaking belongs to the big green tree frogs, while the more shrill sounds belong to the orange-eyed tree frogs. We're a bit excited about the orange-eyed little guys, because they are suspected to be declining in population, but we seem to have plenty here at the moment. We caught up with a couple of them this morning, and were happy to see them engaged in active procreation....

I’m sure the trees and the garden will be responding to the lovely rain with lots of new growth, and it looks like there’s more rain coming. I’m off to take a walk around and feel the damp beneath my feet.