Update (Finally)

It has been a long long winter, a winter that continued well into late spring.  Month after month of freezing rains, downpours that went on for days & weeks on end.  It was like full-blown monsoon, except not warm rain, but icy in huge drops pelting down. The freezing gale-force winds driving them sideways. Snow & hail melting as it slid down the window glass.

So much water for so long roads made unpassable, the railway line washed out causing all trains cancelled for months, & on-going flooding including the  Yallourn coal mine filling with millions of litres of water as the mine walls collapsed and Latrobe and Morwell Rivers fell in…and they are still struggling to drain the opencut…or Lake Yallourn as the locals have dubbed it.

We live on the side of a hill and walking to the veg garden, the compost heap or the back fence was like trekking through a swamp, feet sliding & sinking into grass covered wet mud.  It was amazing, after so long a drought, to each day see how the ground moved, holes appearing where there had been small hillocks and small hillocks replacing dips & holes in the lawn. 

Lawn?  What lawn?  It was impossible to mow, too wet, too muddy, the mower sinking into the boggy ground, hardly a day without more downpours. Once Spring arrived (if spring is what you can call it, a couple of days with 40C temps followed by more weeks of wintry gales) the grass took off, growing more than four feet in places.  It just about hid the compost, nor once cut was the grass any good as compost because it all went to seed.

Yet the leeks flourished.  Growing tall and strong.  Some we used in soups but most of the 40 plants are still out there, now sending up flower stems.  These will look so pretty when the flowers bloom.

It was a hard winter for me as well.

I’ve never been much of a cold weather person. Since getting Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and Fibromyalgia cold weather is sheer torture. And this past winter was one of my worst.

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more later.  i need to rest.