Rain Rain Go Away

There is one subject that’s been on everyone’s lips this year. The weather, and in particular, the rain. The relentless rain.

It makes my blood boil when trawling the various ‘Red Tops’ and social media sites and I see people attacking this beautiful country of ours just because it’s raining.

Yes its summer, yes we’ve had record breaking rainfall and flooding and all the things associated, but who really suffers?

Are you suffering just because you haven’t got your usual tan?

Are you suffering because you can’t have a bbq every evening?

Are you suffering because your camping trip might be slightly damp?

My answer to all these questions is a big, fat NO!

Do you want to know who does suffer? I’ll tell you, Gardeners.

My brother and I run our own Landscaping and Gardening business. We both have a mortgage, we both have bills to pay and we both have families to support.

You see the reason why gardeners, in particular sole trading gardeners suffer most is because quite simply if it rains we cant work and if we cant work we don’t get paid and if we don’t get paid then neither does the mortgage and if the mortgage doesn’t get paid……I don’t even want to think about that!

We’re not exactly well paid to start with as we can’t command the same rates as most other trades due to being undervalued as Alan Titchmarsh quite rightly stated, so having rain stop play so often can be a worry.

Not only that, we are in a seasonal business. We work long hours in summer to make up for the shorter hours in winter. Summer rain has a massive effect on this.

The one positive I can say for this year is that we had a relatively decent winter unlike a few years ago when the ice forced us to down tools for well over a month.

There will be gardeners out there who say just get a raincoat and plod on through and I’ve even had clients who come out with comments like “don’t be soft and get your raincoat on.” (Easy to say from your plush, dry living room I might add!), but we are purists and like to do things properly.

If it’s tipping it down with rain we can’t mow the lawn. Some will say you can, but if it’s sodden and your mower is heavy it will inevitably turn into a mud bath and create lovely areas for weeds to grow. Wet grass takes at least double the time to cut and heavy rain doesn’t do your mower any good.

We can’t dig or tread on the borders for obvious reasons so that rules out pruning and weeding. We can’t use any sort of weed killers, lawn feeds, fungicides etc

Personally our main work consists of landscaping. The list of things we can’t do in the rain is longer than gardening tasks!!

No laying patios, definitely no pointing, no walling, no laying turf.

The only thing we could possibly do is erect fencing, but you try and fill every day of every week with fencing jobs!!

I’ve missed out one important factor and that is simply ITS NOT VERY NICE AT ALL WORKING IN HEAVY RAIN!

So next time your moaning because your weekend bbq plans have been ruined, spare a thought for my brother and I sitting in our van, looking glum and soaked to the bone because all we want to do is work.