To fall and fall

“The rain began again. It fell heavily, easily, with no meaning or intention but the fulfillment of its own nature, which was to fall and fall.”

Helen Garner

There is something to be said for living in a land with a reliable climate (though I naturally make an exception for those parts of the UK that are oppressed mercilessly by lowering clouds throughout the drudgery of the winter months).

It is interesting to contrast the climates of London and Victoria. Wikipedia reveals the following:

• London has some 1633 hours of sunshine per annum.
• Victoria has some 2193 hours of sunshine per annum.
• London averages 602 mm of rain per annum.
• Victoria averages 608 mm of rain per annum.

Though rainfall figures are not dissimilar and average monthly temperatures are within a degree of each other (though London’s slightly warmer weather often feels muggy as a result of the humidity), Victoria’s extra five hundred or so hours of sunshine a year clearly make a difference. Though there are times during the Victorian spring when one wonders if the rain will ever stop – cease it invariably does, giving way reliably to glorious mild, sunny and dry summer months.

Sometimes too dry!

Then – toward the end of the season and just as it seems that the drought has set in permanently and the garden sprinklers are on the verge of giving up the unequal struggle to maintain life in the yard – the weather will break and verdancy is restored.

Sometimes this happens with a bang rather than a whimper:

…but sometimes equally the end result is the most incandescent of rainbows: