Its raining, its winter and its cold. The snow covered slopes of the hills around Flanders glimmer in the murk. There are days like this on Flanders when it barely seems to get properly light and all life is dormant. But then I hear a quick churr of a wren hidden in the bog myrtle and the wink, winks from some pink footed geese nearby and I know that it is an illusion, life is out there and just dealing with the winter conditions as best as it can.
I am out on the moss to measure the monthly rainfall by emptying the raingauge. When working on bogs you become a bit obsessed about rainfall levels as rain is the only source of water to keep the bogs wet. After the month we have had there is more interest than usual in the amount of rainfall and the reading for November on Flanders is 231.4 mm (November rainfall average for Scotland was 256.7mm). So this has been a wet month, in fact since April 1997 (when we started recording rainfall on Flanders) there have been only 5 wetter months than this last month. However this is nothing compared to Cumbria where at Shap 621.4 mm was recorded for the month. But though a wet month is always good for the bog at Flanders we do prefer if possible the right type of rain. Ideally it should be a gentle sprinkle all day everyday as this would keep the sponge-like bog continually topped up. The Moss can only hold so much water so too much winter rain and it just runs off, heavy downpours at anytime can cause problems such as washing out dams put in the ditches and of course no rain for long period lowers the water levels in the peat so damaging the bog vegetation. So at Flanders we like lots of rain all the time providing it is the right type of rain. But this is an opinion that I find is best kept to myself !
