The Spring Drought of 2011

The spring is exceptionally dry this year. We're only just getting to know the soil and we discover that it's silty, a-little-too-freely draining and prone to baking into hard clods. It was a stupid idea to put the new strawberries on a ridge – the water runs off into the gully and away from the roots. I'd placed upturned milk bottles into the ridge and that works a little bit but it's something we'll have to change next spring.

We've also dithered over a new shed. The one we've inherited is a dank hut filled with old styrofoam and plastic garden detritus, without a door, and leaky guttering on only one side, without a downspout. It would have taken all of 15 minutes to screw on some plastic guttering on the other side, and we have got loads of leftover gutters back home, but somehow we kept putting it off over the winter, thinking we'd demolish this sorry excuse for an allotment shed and build another shed anyway, or buy a new one in the B&Q sale. But our inertia combined with our tightness means we don't build nor buy a shed so we miss the late winter rains and have only one water butt that's about half full. OH builds a contraption made out of blue plastic that's supposed to catch run-off from the shed roof and that has most of our neighbouring lottieholders scratching their heads. In any case, the plastic degrades quickly in the sun and the wind flaps it about so much that it rips off one of the stakes that are holding it in place.

Even so, we don't attach the guttering. I'd like to blame OH but the truth is that I have already installed shed guttering before and could just as easily take the initiative and do it again. But I'm too lazy. Instead, we trudge up and down the path to the little river and drag back gallons of water. Oddly, we're not too lazy for that. We tell ourselves that the drought means we'd have had to do this anyway – everyone else's waterbutts are also long empty – and that it's good exercise.

One day, OH has enough. There's still no rain forecast and the plants are practically screaming at us – we feel a bit like the operators of the one lone beer stall at a rock concert. OH orders a bilge hand pump off the internet and takes dozens of yardage of garden hose down to the river. The idea is that the handpump will suck river water up the bank, down the path and into the waterbutt. It's a brilliant idea. If it works, we've got our water problem sorted.

But there are problems with the pump attachment – wrong diameter for the hose, and the hose is so flexible that it caves in on itself instead of sucking the water up. Our Portuguese neighbour takes an interest, and the two men hang over the contraption rubbing their chins. I've decided that it's too much faff and get on with gardening. 

The bilge pump comes back home with us at the end of the gardening day.