The rain in Spain does not fall mainly on the Plain!

I remember when we lived in Sheffield, we worked all week and so we normally only had the weekends to do the gardening and more specifically, mow the lawn. And of course, a lot of the time 'come the weekend, come the rain!'

So, when we researched our move to Spain we checked where there was the least rainfall and the result was Almeria, after all only an hour away from us is Mini-Hollywood where they filmed the Spaghetti Westerns because it is so desert like, due to the lack of rain. Almeria is advertised as having over 320 days of sunshine each year - and to be fair it doesn't rain often, we haven't had any rain for about a month - which isn't bad for March. But when it does rain, it comes down in torrents.

Now, we don't have a lot of grass at the villa but there is a small area and the pups love to lay on it and so, we are back to lawn mowing. Last Wednesday Neil hurt his ankle badly and has struggled to walk without a stick since and has been resting up but on Friday I commented that we needed to try and get the patch of lawn cut soon as it is starting to get a little too long - that's OK, he said, I should be okay by Sunday!

So, it forecast rain on Saturday and after a lovely sunny day the clouds came over the mountains and at about 8pm one of the dogs went outside and got drenched - it had started. And within minutes the heavens had opened and there were rivers running down the street. Within a few hours the garden was starting to flood and we knew we were in for several hours of downpour. By the time we went to bed it was showing no signs of stopping and we woke up to the same downpour. Now it may have stopped for a few hours during the night or not, but by now people were having serious problems.

Many pools were close to overflowing , some pool houses were flooded and pumps were ruined. Many properties have garages here that are underbuilds, that means they are built under the house and the garage ceilings are level with the road. Put this together with a dropped kerb to allow access for the car and hey presto, you have gallons of rain water running down the road and running straight into some of the garages if an alternate run-off route has not been made - it's only about a month ago we had some garages that were full to the ceiling with rainwater and took 2 days to pump out - well, guess what - they're pumping out again!

We're fortunate - the worst we had to sort out was a rather muddy puddle in the garden that Brinkley seemed to take a particular interest in, if he was a little boy he would have had his wellies on and would be jumping in and out of it.

So, we have more of the same forecast for today and a cloudy week ahead. But at least when it stops here, it stops. There is no need to carry an umbrella for weeks on end - just in case, you can plan outdoor events with a fair amount of confidence that it will not be rained off and inbetween rain the sun comes out and everything dries quite quickly, so you are not walking through puddles hours later. The dogs can go out and come back in dry and more to the point, it just doesn't feel as miserable as it did on a rainy day back in Sheffield.

And, of course, it is good for the gardens but as yet, the lawn remains uncut!