It never rains but, thankfully for the plants, it pours

It’s fine. Go back to sleep.

Was it the thunder which woke us? Or the spectacular lightning, turning the sky iceberg-blue? Gradually, over the soothing whirring of last year’s cheap fan, we noticed the drumming of torrential rain on the skylights. It was like being in a permanent White Noise for Restless Babies sound-bath which, admittedly, would change my life. 

We lay there blurrily mumbling: was thunder the sound of clouds bashing together, like children banging heads? Was that forked lightning behind cloud-cover, or basic sheet-lightning? Surely the heatwave would be force to backtrack after this? It’s extraordinary how little basic meteorology one can pick up and still be allowed outside. I thought of Ted Hughes’s “This house has been far out at sea all night”, but even my wild imagination couldn’t transform this solid lump of Edwardiana into creaking Yorkshire stone. Could I turn off the fan for full Qi Gong stereophonic sound-immersion? Fine, so we’d immediately die of heatstroke: a toss-up, but the fan won. 

It hardly mattered. Over and over again, the sky bleached, the walls glowed, the world filled with sorcery. Is there anything better, if one is fortunate, safe and dry, than a really ridiculous storm?

After far longer than, surely, summer storms are meant to take, the night began to quiet. Sirens wailed; the gaps between thunder and lightning grew wider which, I was 110% certain, meant that the headbanging clouds and oceanographic electricity, welcome to my TED talk, were moving further away. I pretended to myself that I could sleep, but I was far too excited. I had a plan.

Even in ordinary, i.e. ongoing climate-emergency but not specifically extreme heat-warning crisis conditions, People Who Grow have a complicated relationship with rain. We welcome it, we are grateful to it, but… is it the right kind of rain? Sufficient, but not unruly? You, an innocent, may welcome a brief shower; you’re wrong. In summer, light rain is worse than nothing. It encourages germination – my last Georgian coriander-seeds, wildflowers from last year’s Greek holiday – and then, the instant those heartbreaking first leaves emerge, seed-case wonkily intact like an unfortunate mob-cap, BAM! Out comes the sun and the seedlings frizzle. 

For flat-dwellers and other container gardeners, there’s another issue. In serious heat, pots dry out almost instantly. After every exhausting summer, I swear to reduce the number of plants I’m trying to keep alive on my roof terrace and then, come the spring, I discover that some unnamed operative has been popping to the garden centre and acquiring yet more lemon-yellow sunflowers, sorrel, mint.

My modest terrace has (pause) 59 overstuffed pots. I’d been desperate for a serious downpour: thorough enough to seep under each wizened leaf, break through the desiccated soil-crust, give everything a good old-fashioned soaking. 

Even over the whirring fan, it was clear that relief had come. 

The rain was easing. The thunder had stopped. All the sane members of my household were asleep when I, like a thief in the night, crept from my bed. I do try to learn the ways of the sensible; I’d managed to wait until the lightning was over (safety first), had even paused to put on my smart new pyjamas (neighbours second). I eased open the door and, like a miracle, I was free.

Journalists are unusually sensitive to the smell of petrichor. Normal humans are too. It’s a mixture of bacteria-emitted geosmin, ozone and plant-oils, which we can detect at minuscule concentrations, perhaps because our ancestors needed to find water. Or have something to write about when it rains. It does, however, smell fantastic. Add the armpitty spice of tomato-plants, blackcurrant leaves’ green tang, ginger rosemary, lemon thyme and a top note of fox-piss, and I’d swear there’s nothing more delicious on this earth. Instantly soaked but nominally decent, barefoot as per, I tried to tell if the saucers full of water meant the plants themselves had had enough, if anything serious had blown over, and then I gave up and simply gazed. It was torchlit chaos out there; banqueting snails on the best night of their lives; worms at it like MPs at constituency key-parties; moonlight-pale moths; whirring dragonflies like perfect machines. Every leaf was chomped, every parsley-seedling flattened, but I’d never feel closer to nature, or luckier to have this little roof terrace than out here, in the drizzle, like a fool.

And when at last I came to, remembering work tomorrow, I stripped off my pyjamas like a guilty child, jumped into bed and cooly passed into instant sleep, where I dreamt, as usual, of a huge back garden, with forgotten terraces, mighty trees and a nearby vine-draped fruit-patch wherein I could scavenge to my heart’s content, while outside the earthworms made sweet sweet love and the heat cranked up. 

Image: Getty