Obsessing about the weather seems like a feature of gardening life. This has certainly been true these last few weeks. We’ve had beautiful sunshine and warmth for about two weeks: a lovely hot late June. But with that has come the worry about water. We rely on our water butts for watering the gardens at London Road Station and now there are the tree pits and the platform planters that require attention.

The water butts have already run dry once three weeks ago. Last Wednesday on the hottest day ever recorded in the UK for July our water butts ran dry again in the edible plot. And of course July is holiday time, so it’s been tricky coordinating our watering rota. I was in despair. We moved plants that we could (our tomatoes) out of the sun into as much shade as we could get.

This morning I was planning a garden version of a gym workout, moving around 200 litres of water from my water butts into those of the station garden: that’s a short walk with 20 watering cans, one in each hand ten times over. Hey, people do weights for 30 minutes in the gym, so why not a more functional exercise?

I had just finished watering the greenhouse when the rain started. The odd thing was my immediate illogical reaction: oh no! it’s raining just when I need to be out porting water into the station garden! Wet but wiser, I praised the weather for relieving me of my onerous task.

This is often how it is: just when we think there will be no more water for a while and all our plants will die, it rains … hard. I’ve been glued to my weather forecast ap for the last few days, but this fortuitous downpour was not on the horizon. Thank-you weather! Just goes to show: never give up!