And The Storms Are Here Again

It's winter so only to be expected but cold and wet is never a very enjoyable experience, is it, however much we may need the rain. We have just had a couple of sunny but by no means warm days, though, which let me get out into the garden. It's been badly neglected in the last few months due to my health problems and then recuperating from surgery so it's going to take a while to get it back to how I'd like it. Pisces is not a gardener so although he'll willingly do things like dig holes and lug heavy things around for me anything else waits on me. 

With my having finally been given clearance to dig, prune and plant I took the chance of the sunny days to dig over the vegetable garden and put in a few seeds - spring onions, coriander, and sugar snap and snow peas if you're interested. I sorted all these out during the last rainy spell and I still have a whole pile of seeds that need to into seed raising punnets sitting in a box near the family room door which were supposed to be planted as well. I bought some seed raising mix and my intention was to head off to the garden centre and invest in a a mini glasshouse to put them into so that they would benefit from any sunny days without getting too chilled. 

Then we went into a four day lockdown after someone who had visited Sydney came down with COVID. Our state government has no hesitation in imposing such short, sharp lockdowns which give time to trace all contacts and isolate them. We've had a few of these and although they're not ideal as far as businesses are concerned and cause general inconvenience, it's probably the safest way to prevent community spread and they have widespread support within the state. Western Australia has had very few instances of COVID and by and large life here after the first major lockdown in 2020 has been pretty much as usual. No masks but social distancing is still encouraged - albeit not carried out all that strictly by everyone I have to say, with complacency creeping in - and we are supposed to check in with an app or sign in whenever we go to the shops or other businesses so that if an outbreak occur it will be easy to trace any contacts and this is working well. Vaccinations are somewhat of a vexed question due to failures at the Federal level and some controversy about the Astra Zenica but are ramping up.

The lockdown has now lifted although there are some restrictions on numbers and masks are mandatory outside the home so my plan for this morning was to head for the garden centre. I'd been keeping a watchful eye on the weather forecast and it was for rain and a possible storm later in the day so it seemed that it would be okay and although it was dull and grey when I got up my plan still seemed feasible. I made my coffee and sat down to drink it - and there was a vivid flash of lightning immediately followed by thunder and the heavens opened. They stayed that way all day. Oh well, planting can wait a bit longer