Mud, glorious mud

Weatherwise, June was one hell of a month. Amazingly, it was not the wettest on record. That was set in June 1860 when 157mm (6.2 in) of water fell. It was even worse if you happened to be living in Cherrapunji, in a remote part of north east India; between August 1860 and July 1861 86.83 feet of rain fell (26.47m). During the same period, the south west of America was struck by a drought more savage than the renowned Dust bowl years of the 1930s.

Anyway, back to the present and the reality of rain on the Rectoryreserve: we are very fortunate in being up on 'the Wolds' so any serious rain water courses down our drive, past the house, round the yard and straight on down the hill to the pond at the bottom, from which any excess overflows into the river tributary which joins the main river stream, which eventually flows down through the most local town - which did experience quite a bit of flooding. Before we built what everyone thinks are diagonal speed humps (but they are actually water buffers) on our drive, quite a bit of storm water used to just take the most direct downward route via the front of the house. Now, the humps deflect the worst of it off to the sides of the drive and into the verges.

Nonetheless, the rain still made an impression; most notably in the pigs' territory. In the picture above on the right you can see Mangel and Wurzel inspecting the boundaries of their domain when they first moved from the stalls to the outside world. Quite clean and tidy really. In the other picture you can see Ginger and Pepper wading through the same pen, now transformed into something resembling the field at Glastonbury. See the third picture! It was absolute hell for us to wade through in our wellies to retrieve their feed bowls or replenish the straw in and around their arks, but they absolutely loved it. Many years ago, when nobody had a care about recycling, the copse the pigs are in was used for dumping rubbish. So, the rain has enabled them to really rootle down into the mud and retrieve all manner of bottles, pans and sundry bits of metal! It's quite a sight to see a pig with several inches of thick, gloopy mud- with bits of rubbish stuck in it - on the end of his nose! They have never had so much fun - and we have so far filled half a dozen old plastic feed sacks with the rubbish they have dug up!