Notice that the word "sunny" doesn't appear anywhere in the title of this blog post :) There's a reason for that: this is the view out our window this morning and nearly every morning, unless it's pouring rain....
Gray, gray, gray skies, as far as the eye can see. Almost.Every.Day. It doesn't slow us down, though. We've pretty much learned to ignore it unless it is really pounding and flooding. Before we came, I thought the rain and gray skies and cool summer temperatures (rarely over 70 degrees) would be hard to adjust to. Nope. It's just the new normal. You put a sweater on and grab an umbrella before you leave home, then it's business as usual. And when the sun does come out for a few hours, you enjoy every single minute of it. It becomes the first topic of conversation wherever you go! "Isn't it a lovely day?" "Doesn't the sun make everything look brilliant?" (And it does.) Nobody takes the sun for granted.
Seems that we are having a very wet year here. When we arrived in January, Southern England was experiencing a drought that has plagued them for two years. There has actually been a "hosepipe" in place. What's a hosepipe, you ask? It's a garden hose with a sprinkler on it. It has been illegal to use them. Not that you'd want to with all the rain puddles around....
Things have definitely changed in the past few weeks. We've had the highest monthly increase in water levels in the aqueducts that they've ever seen. Now I'm wondering if we are hogging all the water that the western U.S. needs so badly right now. This April was the rainiest April in over 100 years in England, and June was the rainiest June ever since they started keeping records. We've been wishing we could blow some of this water across the pond and home to those fires in Utah, though we've heard that the worst is over now. We sure hope so.
June was quite a month, in many ways. We've had some exciting, diverse weeks since I last wrote, so I hope to write some individual posts - soon. Stay posted. ~Pat~
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