Dear Readers, when I was complaining about the heat a few days ago, one of you lovely people told me to be careful what I wished for. Well, last night the weather finally broke. The thunder was so loud that it made it me drop my Kindle, and the poor cat crept up to the bedroom and lay between us, as flat to the covers as she could possibly get. What with the random letting-off of fireworks (people round here seem to celebrate anything with pyrotechnics) plus the terrifying vacuum cleaner, she’s had a nerve-wracking time of it lately, and the storm was almost the final straw. However, the coolness afterwards was delicious, and so I was looking forward to my walk this morning to see what had happened.

Which brings us to the pan. Before the storm the water level was well below the rivets that hold the handles on. This morning it’s well above them (and that’s without the obvious splashage. I reckon we had about an inch of rain in 45 minutes.

The pond is practically full and the purple loosestrife is leaning at a most peculiar angle.

The hemp agrimony looks damp but undefeated.

And so we head off to Cherry Tree Wood, the ‘tamer’ of the two woods within walking distance. This one has a children’s playground, tennis courts, and is generally more of what you’d expect from a municipal park, though it does still have some chunks of ancient woodland. A family of crows were digging for worms at the entrance, something they can finally do now that the rain has softened up the soil a bit.

I suspect that this was Mum and Dad with one of their two youngsters in the background. The adult crows pretty much rule the wood, and I once saw them on the rails of the Northern Line at East Finchley station, trying to eat a dead rat that seemed to have expired during an ill-advised trip across the live rail. I was worried that they’d be mown down by an approaching tube train, but they were happy to fly up and let the weight of the carriages do a bit of squashing for them. Sorry. I do love the way that they take every opportunity, though. The fledglings will learn a lot from their parents.

And then we go into the wood, and I start to notice what the rain has really done.

If you look closely, you can see all the rivers and streams that last night’s rainfall has carved through the fallen leaves. It gave me a real sense of the lay of the land and helps to explain why the grassy area to the right of this photo gets so sodden during years of heavy rainfall.

Apologies for the shaky photo! I don’t think I changed the settings after my dusk photos on Thursday. Doh.

It might not be the last of the rain either – according to BBC weather we have an 88% chance of another storm tonight between 21.00 and 22.00. I shall clutch my Kindle tightly and try to warn the cat.