Four inches in one day

Rain! Since noon yesterday, we have received four wonderful inches (100mm) of much-needed rain. And so this morning everything is very, very soggy and I'm not going out there. Just standing back and taking a few snaps, while under the relatively dryish cover of our pergola area.

Here's soggy old Pam & Jamie Land this morning (click on the photo for a better look). The rain still steadily falling, everything saggy yet shiny, lapping it up, but there are a few victims, inevitably.

This is a calamity in progress, which I was planning to blog about in a week or so, once I've solved a few practical problems with the plants and pots and added some fish etc. It's my new water garden, and this morning it looks like a typhoon victim with an "after" caption attached. Needless to say the Louisiana iris has been rescued from its shipwrecked position and is slowly reviving. More on the water garden next week...

Generally, everything else is as happy as my NSW Christmas bush: wet and bedraggled like commuters who forgot to take their umbrellas, but otherwise happy.

Unfortunately, my African desert dweller, the lithops, is in shock. When I got home yesterday afternoon (by which time 60mm – a bit over two inches – of rain had fallen) I rescued the lithops from the garden and brought it under dry shelter. A further 40mm of rain fell overnight, so the rescue was worth it, but it's looking unhealthily crinkly and dodgy. So, no water for the next three months, lots of sunshine and fingers crossed. It's in the hospital wing for sure.

This rain is wonderful, exactly what the garden needed. When I dig down deep into the soil it's far too dry. The top few inches of soil hold moisture and keep plants alive, but deeper down it's a different story. And for larger, more established trees and shrubs, it's the level of moisture deeper in the soil which determines these plants' health or otherwise. So heavy rain, in my books, is a welcome tonic for all the older inmates in my plant asylum.