Life after the floods

View of the flooded garden

As you can see from the picture above, the river flooded the entire garden and stopped just short of the door to the therapy room.  We had to use a series of planks, ladders and supports to get off our boat and out through the car port which was also under water. Fortunately the water level stopped just short of our electricity box at the top of the car port.  The gas meter toppled over and was completely submerged but continued to supply us with gas for the central heating and cooker so we were very lucky!

A thriving clematis 

In spite of being under water for weeks the garden plants have shown amazing resilience.  My mimosa is in full flower and the citrus trees have all survived, despite the fact that the greenhouse was blown apart in the December gales. Luckily I had covered them with fleece. The clematis (above) is in full bloom and forms a fabulous scented canopy over the entire boundary between us and our neighbour.

We have spent the last couple of days clearing as much as possible of the silt and debris from the garden and Dave pressure hosed the patio so it looks a lot better!  At least the weather has been dry and sunny which makes a welcome change and there's a promise of more dry weather to come.

The ducks have been chasing each other far more frequently today, at least three pairs investigated the nest boxes and one female mallard checked out our garden deck box, too.

Dave set up the bird box camera yesterday and this morning we saw a Blue Tit enter the box twice. We hadn't realised that the camera recorded sound, too, so we were surprised to hear the bird's high pitched call as it entered the box.