Hello! Well, the longed-for rain has arrived. In true North Carolina fashion, it arrived in bucketloads. We had some rain a few days ago, which was nice, then a pattern set in that will give us a lot of rain concentrated in one week. (I've rapidly discovered that having a vegetable patch makes you even more addicted to weather forecasts and looking at the sky muttering 'no bloomin' rain again' ). We had rain on saturday night but on sunday it really chucked it down. Strong winds, lots of lightning, torrential rain. My pumpkin hlls were literally islands for a while there. I heard a neighbour's tree (or maybe a very large limb) go down, it was a vicious brute of a storm.

After the deluge I went out to survey the damage and happily there wasn't any to the vegetable plot. Thankfully we didn't get any hail - I've seen hail here getting on for golf ball size. That'll put a dent in your cucumber. We are due, as I say, for more rain throughout the week and it'll help immeasureably. The butternut squashes (photo at top of this entry) are growing lots of fruit as are the yellow crooked neck squash. The cucumbers are proving to be prolific and the rain will help all of them.

I do have a couple of large containers for collecting rain water but I'm always wary of keeping standing water around too long - eventually mosquitos will be drawn to it and will breed like mad. Still, it's good to have some water for a few days after a deluge. Whether we see more wet weathewr or return to drought-like conditions remains to be seen. August here, in my limited experience, can be full of the classic afternoon pop ups storms we get in NC so we shall have to see. For now I am very grateful for the rain we've had. Thanks for reading and I'll leave you with a couple more photos - a crooked neck squash growing and a large pot of sweet basil I keep by my porch. Delicious.