Rain, rain and more rain - Maree

 

W&N watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm

It has been raining solidly, every day, for over two weeks now and the landscape is saturated with water, forming large pans of water everywhere. Some days my rain gauge overflows, meaning more than 120mm in just a few hours! My chooks are bedraggled and wet, choosing the safety and dryness of the coop. While all this water is excellent for our ground water tables, it has caused massive flooding and damage in large parts of South Africa. I think we're getting a spin-off from all the ice storms and flooding in the Northern Hemisphere, because this is most unusual weather for us.

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No rain yet... - Maree

Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams. 

- Ashley Smith 

 Ink sketch and colour wash of a scene in Magaliesburg in my Moleskine Nature sketchbook

It's the first of October, heading for mid-summer here in South Africa and we've had no rain yet. Normally we have the winds in August clearing up old growth and our first spring rains early in September, but the wind has been blowing right through September, seemingly blowing the clouds back to whence they came from.

I'm having to water my garden every day, we've had some very high temperatures, but nothing seems to give life like even just a couple of millimetres of rain...

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After the rain - Maree

All was silent as before -
All silent save the dripping rain.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

We've had some beautiful rain to end the season - for the past couple of weeks we've had heavy afternoon showers virtually every day and the ground is so saturated that puddles collect next to all the farm roads. We've had this before, with rains carrying on well into May and even June, which is peculiar for us, as Gauteng (South Africa) is a summer rainfall area.

Lapwings and Plovers

I braved the wind and rain for a short while yesterday and visited one of my local birding areas, just a couple of minutes from home. A large mixed flock of Lapwing and Golden Plover were just above the beach on a muddy inlet and I couldn't resist trying to get some of them down on paper. Not the best sketch I ever did, but given the conditions, I wont be too critical.

More rain in Tarlton - Maree

“Anyone who says sunshine brings happiness has never danced in the rain.”



We have had so much rain over the past 2 months, the ground is absolutely water-logged - pools of water remain on the lawn and dips in the ground for days - yesterday again 2 short down-pours left the rain gauge at 40mm, a daily figure for the past two months. I did this sketch just around the corner from us on the Oaktree road.



I did this sketch of a corner of my garden as we had a heavy down-pour in November last year.

The Vaal Dam forms the central storage reservoir for the Vaal River water supply system which supplies water to the industrial powerhouse of the whole country. It is currently 106% full and caused great devastation down-stream when they had to open the sluice gates to lower the dangerously high level of the dam. See pics and read more about this at my Nature Journal .