Is Spring Coming Early This Year

We’ve had a summer here in the Algarve that has lasted for nearly seven months. The trouble with that is the lack of rain. A country cant survive properly with more than three months with no rain. Back in the old days we used to get three or four periods of torrential downpours every year. Sometimes those downpours would last three days and our area was nearly cut off by the flooding. The river at the bottom of the garden overflowed into the next field and all across our orange grove. The water was wellington height for a few days. That, of course, did wonders for the water table. We dont get that any more.

One of those downpours used to come round about September 10th every year, which was great for the gardens, especially the vegetable gardens. Without that regular downpour the trees were put under severe stress, and the vegetables simply couldn’t handle it.

Luckily this year for the first time in three years we had rain on September 11th, and we have had spatters of rain ever since. The rainfall hasn’t been enough to fill the streams, and the stream at the bottom of my garden has been dry since the end of March.

This year has luckily been nowhere near as hot as last year when we had days when the temperature was up to 46 degrees, which as you can imagine is unbearable. We usually go away for the summers to avoid such enervating days. But the general summery weather has lasted until the middle of november, and it was only last week that I stopped using the pool, and went into normal clothes again.

As I write this the leaves are beginning to turn yellow and russet. But one thing has been odd this year. Everything seems to have come early.

The figs were two or three weeks earlier ripening than usual. The grapes were earlier as well, but the pomegranates are a disaster, with most of them splitting open due to the dry weather earlier in the summer, and the birds promptly scoffed the contents despite the fact that they weren’t ripe.

This week the weather is a bit nippy first thing, and when the sun drops below the tree line, but on the terrace with the sun high in a cloudless sky you can still sunbathe. No problem with the cold here. In fact, it feels as if spring is coming before christmas this year. The first yellow flowers are already peeking through the grass.