The season of infeasible unseasonality

After a spectacular show from the orchard these last few weeks with weather that makes only a rare appearance in July, we have a scene rarely glimpsed in the last two winters. You have to fear for your plums in these circumstances, let alone your rainfall stats. All this on the first blossoming of Al Lotment's sixth decade. Mother Nature has a wry sense of humour.

Flight of Fancy

Here is my highly individual commemoration of Al Lotment's fine half century - a fitting monument, I hope you'll agree: the garden Al Stairs.

It comprises a stone for every day of our hero's existence. Born out of a scruffy environment that no-one knew what to do with, and with limited available resources, it is an impressive structure in its own way, although it has a few ragged edges and so beauty may be in the eye of the beholder.

It performs no great function and doesn't go anywhere, and so would be the perfect route to the upstairs club that such a veteran will surely now take. Global Lead on Soils Reclamation for Human Advancement, perhaps?

And as a gift? Last month's rainfall figures.

	Snab	Brize
January	103.4	65.5
February	22.6	43.9
March	32.2	27.4
2015 to date	158.2	136.8