Autumn arrives at last!

Tonight is full moon, ushering in the first day of Autumn here in Cape Town, and not a moment too soon. To say we are tired of the heat and humidity is possibly an understatement, and cooler days will be much appreciated by people and plants alike. We managed to get through summer without the looming threat of last year's Day Zero (when the taps would be turned off), thanks to some fair rains last winter and a few unexpected occasions when cold air miraculously arrived from the South Atlantic to dump water on our parched land - Divine Intervention indeed. Capetonians have played a huge part in conserving, preserving and generally appreciating the limited water resources available to us, and it is hard to believe that we so carelessly used water before. Although we are now allowed 105 litres per day per person, and restrictions have been further eased to allow a little watering with a garden hose (read the rules carefully!), we are still using less than 70 litres each in our household with absolutely no sense of deprivation in any sphere.
The little well that has kept the garden green for the last 35 or so years dried up completely in December and all we could see was a rock and sandy bottom for nearly three months as the water table had dropped below 8 feet. In a good winter, the water table once reached 2 feet and parts of the garden became waterlogged! Last week, a cut-off low developed (once again, an unusual source of rain for us) and threw down 35 mm of water over our garden, and much more elsewhere, with some places in the Western Cape recording more than 250 mm in less than a day. Another miraculous intervention. And with that one day, in fact morning of rain, the water table rose immediately and we watched as it has risen daily to a level of around 7 feet. Who knows how far below the sand level it was before? It may have risen 3 feet for all we know. But just to see the water rise gives hope for the winter ahead and a recharging of our much-depleted life-giving, in fact essential for life, water resources. Even the trees have burst into new life, with fresh greenery shooting from twigs long thought to have died; proof that Nature takes a lot of beating.