And the Heavens Cried

Flooding is expected over large parts of England this week as the torrential rain which battered southern and western regions over the Spring Bank Holiday moves north.

While most of the North enjoyed a sunny Bank Holiday, some southern counties saw 50mm of rain fall in 12 hours today - more than half the monthly average.

The Environment Agency (EA) issued 44 “flood watches” and a Met Office spokesman said today that the dismal weather was expected to move into the Midlands and the North tonight and tomorrow morning, causing some localised flooding.

“A new pulse of rain will come in tonight that will move up over the northern parts of England tomorrow. Everywhere will see some rain," he said.

He described the last two days as “the wettest bank holiday” he could remember. The beaches in the south were deserted of holidaymakers.

“Some counties have seen 40mm of rain already yesterday and about 55mm over Sunday,” he said.

“We would normally expect 60 to 70 mm through the course of the month so they have had almost all of that over this weekend.

“It’s early to say if it’s the wettest bank holiday because it’s still bucketing down. But it’s the wettest I can remember for some time.”

My only comment, here we go again! We have about 20% of the Canna collection planted outside, and the remainder has stayed put, inside it's safe winter storage while we wait for normality, whatever that is, to be restored. The Heavens have cried this weekend, and I've come close to tears as well! It will be into June before we can attend to the rest of the collection, which is the latest planting-out that I can remember.