February sunshine – and floods

Give a storm a name and it tries to live up to it – and Storm Dennis has certainly been a “Menace”, in Worcestershire at least!     Acres of land in the County have been submerged for well over 10 days now and when the main river bridge in Worcester is closed to traffic the knock on effects are encountered for miles around.   An amazing statistic heard on the local radio station this morning tells us that 500 tonnes of water flows under the footbridge in the centre of Worcester per second!   Difficult to comprehend the force that must be exerting on the lovely old stone bridge a few hundred yards downstream.    No wonder it is closed to traffic.    We hear of flood defences in towns upstream being breached and flooding in properties whose owners thought they were safe.    We are told it is  the “one in a hundred years” flood, except it is the fourth such one in the last twenty years.   Our house and garden stand in an area zoned “one in a thousand years” flood, so fingers crossed….

The Severn is two fields away from our boundary down a steep drop and we often forget it is there!   We still can’t see it, even in full flow as it is now, but a short walk down the lane in either direction brings it home to us exactly what a force of nature it is.    Nearby fishing lakes have been swallowed up by the river, water as far as the eye can see.  A  walk into the local bluebell woods is completely out of the question at the moment – the pictures show the meadow on the way to the woods  is now a lake.

Back to the peace and tranquility of the garden and the sun is shining and new growth abounds, spring can’t be far away.    Our very dry, free draining soil is currently extremely soggy, but even so we can get on with weeding in a sunny sheltered spot away from the chilly wind.    Hedge laying around the orchard is nearly complete, just the final binding needed along the top of the hedge.   Fence posts have been replaced as all the original ones have rotted and the final job is putting up wire to try and outwit the local rabbit population.   One side of the fence has been completed and what back breaking work that was, removing bramble roots at the same time.   Only another fifty yards or so to go and then hopefully the orchard will be rabbit proof.

Some days I feel a little like Mr Macgregor in Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit – horrified at the sight of a plump rabbit on the lawn.    We have been round the perimeter of the garden on numerous occasions checking for rabbit size holes and still they come in!    We have reinforced the wire netting and plugged a few possible entrance holes and, I hardly dare say this,  – no rabbits for the last week!   Hooray!    I’m sure they would be much happier hopping around the pasture land outside our garden fence.

Spring flowers are now very much in evidence.   Narcissus Tete a Tete is coming into flower along with other clumps of Narcissus around the garden and orchard.   The hellebores can always be relied upon and look particularly lovely in the sunlight.   There are a few flowers on the Vinca Gertrude Jekyll and two Camellia shrubs are laden with pink flowers.  There are plenty of buds on a couple of cherry trees and I look forward to the flowers, if the pigeons would kindly stop pecking them off!