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Nature can be a cruel mother. Tonight she sent the rain, heavy and prolonged, knowing it would tempt out the toads to walk across the roads as people returned home from work.
Driving into my road - a street so small that calling it a road gives it illusions of grandeur - I stopped twice to rescue two toads (and a piece of crumpled up cellophane) from the tarmac. Three more toads were saved from stepping into the danger zone and were placed in the relative sanctuary of my garden.
I picked up a big frog from the middle of the road beside the stables and popped it on to the verge. Another stood, stupified, further along. I was too late to help him: either clipped by a car or picked up by a dog, he seemed not long for this life. I placed him in a flowerbed to die with some dignity.
Rainbows bring out a childlike sense of wonder in me; especially double rainbows, and I have seen two of those this week. Because they are so rare, I feel they simply have to be auspicious.
To be rewarded by the rainbow, however, it is necessary to first have the rain. After a global-warmed and dried early spring, there hasn’t been much of that around here recently. The ground has been hard as concrete and scored by deep cracks like the lines on an octogenarian’s face. If that isn’t a demonstration of the aging effects of the sun, I don’t know what is.
The rain has returned with a vengeance. Northumberland already boasts the best skies in Britain: big, bold and expressive. This week, the skies have surpassed themselves in their dramatic, Turner-esque turmoil. I always imagine Wagner would provide the ideal accompaniment to the movement of a stormy sky.
Today’s rain also seems to have stopped my sneezing. Bring it on!
I don’t know why mud-coloured jodhpurs aren’t more popular. They would hide a multitude of sins. They wouldn’t show that the wearer had been crouching down while wearing muddy wellies, which then smeared mud onto the bottom and back of the thighs.
I was crouching down to battle with the mud welded on to my horse’s legs, so I could put her boots on. I might be better off following her example by wading barefoot through the oozing mass that is occupying the field gateway: then the mud wouldn’t seize my wellies and threaten to hang on until I lose my balance and fall over.
To be fair, it hasn’t been a bad winter; the ‘proper’ mud didn’t start until after Christmas, and there have been some stunning days. Take yesterday, for example, when the warmth promised spring and dropped hints about drying up the ground. I turned the moulting grey mare out for a few hours to have a roll without her rug. She came back looking like a piebald.
Yesterday was a false dawn, though. Today, the March winds have been blowing and the grey clouds have thrown down hard little rods of rain angled like clock hands at 20-to-the hour. The saturated earth lapped it up and became even muddier.Horses suffer from mud fever. I have mud fatigue. I wonder if I can get a sick note for that?
Nature can be a cruel mother. Tonight she sent the rain, heavy and prolonged, knowing it would tempt out the toads to walk across the roads as people returned home from work.
