What do you do with a rain gague in a drought?

We haven't done much at the allotment this week as we seem to spend all our time watering. It is so long since we have had any rain that the water troughs are vital to the survival of our crops. Nick has two seven litre watering cans and I have two five litre ones and we just trudge back and forth for over and hour.


One of my birthday presents this week was a rain gague. The fact that we have been suffering from a heat wave and are in a drought situation it is possibly the most useless present ever received. Until today!

Our first rain for weeks so we rushed out to put the gauge in the plant pot by the front door and can officially say that 5mm of water fell from the sky this afternoon. It actually felt like a lot more than that as I was playing bowls at the time and was a lot wetter than I would expect from 5mm of water. The match was the club mixed pairs and my partner and I won convincingly 24:14 so the weather change was to our advantage in a sporting as well as gardening way.