By ‘C’:
Some of the cows had the right idea, I
thought, on my way to the session this morning:
It has been eyes to the skies
for many of us over the past few days: not looking out for aircraft this time, but
weather watching, mostly in hope of rain.
It was not just a few drops that were wanted, but a downpour bordering
on torrent, because prolonged sunny spell has now graduated to driest start to a
summer in England since records began:
On Friday evening in my village it had been
almost a social event, popping outside to get a good vantage point of a
promising-looking weather front coming in, and speculating whether it would in
fact deliver:
When the merest sprinkling of a shower began
and promptly ceased, expectation wilted.
Quarter of an hour later, however, came a sound we had not heard in
weeks:
Phew!
What has been lacking since has been any kind
of precipitative follow-up. Or plants
noticeably growing again: they have merely ceased to wilt quite so fast.
Some species seem to be foregoing the idea of
fruiting this year. Others are getting
on with letting fruit ripen seriously early – it is still only July:
At home, grass not growing simply means one
less job to do in the garden. No point
even attempting to water the lawn, any more than there would be reason to mow
(or scythe) it. To a livestock-farmer,
however, meadows not producing must be seriously bad news? It has been most strange over the last week
or so seeing cattle at other sites, on what should be best-quality pasture-land,
tucking into bails of hay. (Though, of
course, the situation hardly bears comparison with that in some other countries
at the moment.)
Meantime there has been no shortage of
interesting and beautiful things to look at in the heavens. Sunbeams just like in devotional pictures on
theme ‘resurrection’ are pretty, and can be quite startling when you see them
in real life; but they do not signify meteorological conditions likely to
result in more rain:
Light refracted as in a rainbow – except that
it was not a rainbow – does not mean rain either. ’Fraid you will have to take my word for it
that the cloud pictured below, was acting like a prism: I was not able to
capture all the colours on film. Nor do
I know what the technical term for this phenomenon is. ‘Cloud iridescence’ perhaps?
As for golden sunsets, well those usually
presage fine weather the following day:
Sure enough, after a gorgeous sunset on
Sunday, yesterday dawned bright ...
... then turned into a ‘scorcher’. – Or in Met-Office parlance, the conditions
which trigger a level-3 Heat Health Watch alert.
So not a day for anyone to seek peace and
quiet by going up on the roof.
Fortunately, today – Tuesday: Green-Gym day –
the weather was a little kinder to those looking to work outdoors. Lower temperatures anyway; and a lovely cooling
breeze in favoured spots, eg atop ramparts of Wallingford Castle Meadows.
So, sunhats, sunglasses, full-length flowing
sleeves, factor-50 sunscreen, chilled water, and rest-breaks in the shade, it
was time for all of those. With the
result that, as usual, the main danger of losing a person overboard at Green
Gym would be (continuing the numerical theme from last week’s AGM quiz) would
not be heat exhaustion, but someone having to admit after the tea-break, “The
square root of minus one divided by the square root of sixtyfour.”
The first task today was to have been to
change a plaque and run up a new flag.
A Green Flag has become almost a permanent fixture at Wallingford Castle
Meadows. They are awarded annually. Which means that for the last ten years
around this time of year it has been someone’s job to raise a new one. This year it had fallen to us to form a flag-raising
detail – except that someone forgot the key, so all we could do was to change
over the notice on the fence.
How many Green-Gymmers does it take to fix a
new sign?
When it came to the main task of the morning,
at least the desiccated state of the grass on the Upper Meadow meant that our
targets could be easily spotted:
As before, ragwort and thistle were taken out
by lazy dog (or plain gloved hands) and scythe respectively:
By session-end, in all the zones we
worked (which form nearly all of Upper Meadow) there was not a ragwort to be seen. Which was very satisfying.
The butterflies flitting about the place (Chalk Hill Blue, I think) were also very pretty.
A pity they would not stay still long enough for a photoshoot!
Still no sign of any more rain in the
foreseeable.
Oh, and the explanation of the mathematical turn
of humour? It was supplied after the AGM
by today’s Session Leader. I found it
easiest (with some assistance from my family: thank you!) to start from the
end, and work my way back:
The square root of 64 = 8The operation ‘divided by’ can also be expressed as ‘over’The square root of -1 is i (symbol used for notating imaginary and complex numbers)So, square root of minus one divided by square root of sixtyfour = i/8= I over-ate
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