Hi, my name is Leigh, and I am a pluviophile...

The rains have arrived!

Glorious, saturating, overflowing, rain...

I never thought I would be so happy to see mud again. Every time I head out onto the farm I intentionally drive through every puddle so that the resulting spray painted effect of muddiness covers my bakkie like a coat of armour which is then flaunted around the village with pride and joy - until Corks forces me to wash it all off - such a spoilsport...

I just cannot get enough of the stuff. I know that in about 3 weeks time I will be hating it, but for now I'm going to revel in the splendour of glorious wet earth.

In the last two weeks we have had close to 100mm of rain. There is actually water in the top dam near the highway for the first time in over 6 months. The picture on the left was taken just over a week ago - the entire dried out surface of the dam littered with the skeletal remains of thousands of fish. If you look at it today, you would hardly believe that it even looked like this at all. It's such a sight for sore eyes to see precious water once again flowing into the dam.

The weather has been tumultuous, to say the least. The storms have blown in fast on strong North Westerly winds and dumped torrents of rain amid flashing lightning and deafening thunder. There has been a wild kind of desperation to them, as though they're in some sort of race. I'll even admit that the thunder has made me jump on several occasions. Mother Nature deserves the utmost respect and lightning is not something to smirk at around these parts...

Luckily, so far there has been no real damage from these storms, apart from the odd fallen tree and stuck vehicle. Just lots and lots of much needed rain and runoff. The pastures have awakened with renewed vigour - who could have imagined that the Kildare desert still had some life in it after all? - and the cows were absolutely thrilled to return to eating grass again after an 8 month period of being fed anything that we could find to keep them going.

The drought has broken and our hearts are full of hope once more...