Gardens and parks have been suffering and our poor farmers have struggled with animals and crops. Their fields have become cracked and desert-like with the greenness sucked away. When we flew back to Birmingham from Majorca on July 25th, we looked down upon a very un-English straw-coloured landscape.
Even our trees have been suffering - shedding leaves or simply drooping. Trees are only big plants. They need water like other plants. Up our garden the branches hang heavy with small apples. Their swelling growth has been slowed to a halt and many have fallen as the trees switch to survival mode.
You do what you can. I have constantly put food and water out for our avian friends and areas of the garden - including our vegetable plot - have been watered regularly. Surprisingly, we do not have a hosepipe ban here in Yorkshire even though most of our reservoirs are only 50% full.
Doom-mongers will say that this has been a frightening summer that continues to demonstrate the future impact of climate change and global over-heating. They may be right but for me this has been the best summer of my life.
I think of many summers past when the grass stayed defiantly green and hot spells were limited to a day or two if we were lucky. I call them green summers and it is, I think, very likely that we will experience plenty more of them in the next two decades.
Don't get me wrong, I am not denying the seriousness of climate change. It is very real but I will not be weighed down by that burden in the years I have left. I would rather just say quite simply that the summer of 2026 has been the best one I have ever known.
But we may be reaching the end of it. This evening was a little cooler with an ethereal bright pink western sky perhaps indicating changing conditions. After weeks without precipitation, it seems that rain is predicted in the next few days. It will be very welcome that's for sure.
from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/W5NmJYp
