The water is rising

Way down in the bottom of our nearby marl pit the water is rising! This is because the water table, the aquifer, is filling up after all the rain. This is such good news after several years of us being told how the water table is depleted and how we have to have a hosepipe ban. Now I should think we are safe for this year.
Water appears in the bottom of "The Dell" about every seven years. It stays for several weeks and one year attracted a pair of mallards who made a nest, only to be left high and dry when the water subsided. The marl pit appears on fifteenth century maps and is a wooded sanctuary for wildlife including foxes. Medieval farmers dug out marl which is chalky clay and spread it on the fields to fertilise them.