After the yellow weather warnings last night and the subsequent torrential rain this morning it seemed timely to post another photo album from one of our neighbourhood walks.  This morning as I set out at 8.30 with the dogs I looked west and where normally we can have views across to Glastonbury Tor and the levels, there was simply a grey curtain of doom. Within fifteen minutes we were all getting drenched. I was not too happy with it, but not half as pissed off as Fudge who slowed her progress to the point where it was difficult of ascertain if she was actually alive, with her tail buttoned down tight as if to keep her waterproof.  Only Ella – thick in the fur and thick in the head – was oblivious to the wet, romping through the wet grass.

Contrast this with Thursday when I was out at the same time enjoying a proper jamspangler of a day. In my previous post I captioned a picture “this is why we garden”.   I guess this album should be tagged “this is why we live here”.  In such warm – perhaps I would venture to say hot – weather I am always reminded of one of my favourite passages from John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath) as he describes a “land turtle” getting up and over a road:

“The sun lay on the grass and warmed it, and in the shade under the grass the insects moved, ants and ant lions to set traps for them, grasshoppers to jump into the air and flick their yellow wings for a second, sow bugs like little armadillos, plodding restlessly on many tender feet.  And over the grass at the roadside a land turtle crawled, turning aside for nothing, dragging his high-domed shell over the grass: His hard legs and yellow-nailed feet threshed slowly through the grass, not really walking, but boosting and dragging his shell along. The barley beards slid off his shell, and the clover burrs fell on him and rolled to the ground. His horny beak was partly open, and his fierce, humorous eyes, under brows like fingernails, stared straight ahead”