Not Quite Mrs Sou’wester
May Six Word Photo Story Challenge: “This Is Me”
It’s raining — again. Could you guess?
England is “a green and pleasant land” — as is all of the UK. It is green because it, er… rains quite a bit. It is also the reason the British are known for talking about the weather — incessantly — which we do.
Forty years ago, my husband and I bought our current suburban house because of its large garden. There are now fruit bushes, apple trees, and small vegetable beds. Roses are climbing along part of one fence; clematis is growing up the house wall, and hollyhocks, lupins, ox-eye daisies—more or less everything expected in an English Country Garden of the 18th and 19th centuries. The only addition, considered a waste of food-growing space back in the day, are pockets of grass masquerading as lawn.
And we love it. But it drinks water — which is no longer a cheap commodity, even when there’s no summer hosepipe ban in force (yes, we get those in the UK — hilarious, eh?).
Therefore, year-round water conservation is the name of the game.
On either side of the house, three forty-gallon plastic drums fed from the roof stand below the gutters' downpipes. When half become depleted members of the household are under orders to take two…
