1001 water-wise ways: celebrating rain

I don't think I've ever heard this many expressions of relief and gratitude: in the last week, the greater Cape Town area has seen good rains. We'll never take these for granted again: unless you're a hermit, you'll have seen that extraordinary video clip of the rain coursing down a bone-dry riverbed near Worcester, and everyone who has rain tanks is purring and posting pics of them online with captions "FULL AT LAST!"

At the same time, I've been getting some interesting new tips, and doing a lot of reading -- but most of these involve sewage and waste water recycling, and while they're interesting, they're not really what I'm in the mood for right now (but I shall SOON reveal the True Stories about what happens when we flush while living on an estate -- You Won't Believe What Happens Next).

Instead I'd like to celebrate the rain. Also to utter my usual Cassandra-like warnings: we may all be dancing on the spot, with three whole months of winter still to come, but the blessed rain has barely touched sides. It's had almost no effect on the bigger dams (which supply over half our water) whatsoever; and even if it rains every week for the entire winter, we'd still have to go a long way to replenish our water supplies to the point of relaxing our vigilance. So: we all need to keep on saving and harvesting water.

But there's no doubt that the scent of rain and soaked soil and vegetation are cheering us all immensely, along with the fuzz of green that is Nature's immediate and miraculous response. So let's relax and look at something beautiful to celebrate, at the very least, the end of one of the longest and hardest summers Cape Town has ever seen.

This is one of Simon Sephton's extraordinary photographs of water. He specialises in what I think of as portraits of water, which he crops and enlarges to form beautiful images that look like pieces of abstract art -- and yet the sense of liquid and flow remains. He takes pictures of water in its "natural" context, so often rocks of the Table Mountain chain, river pebbles, floating foliage, and the tracery of reflected branches weave into his images.

Here, take a look:

"Beyond Blue" by Simon Sephton. Taken right here in Silvermine Nature Reserve.

This tells you why he's so passionate about photographing water: https://www.simonsephton.com/

Here's one I loved so much, I bought a print:

And I can't resist posting one more:

So thank you, Simon, for giving us weary water warriors and worriers something wonderful to rest our eyes on, and a fresh way of really looking at something we all used to take for granted.