But today was the first day that felt like any indication that here in the UK we do have a summer. The winter that we've just had has been one of the worst and probably the worst since 1963. The cloud and cold arrived in November and today was the first day since early November that it got anywhere near feeling warm and sunny. Today it's been mostly sunny and the temperature got up to a barmy 12.5 degrees centigrade!
I did a wicket inspection over at the paddock this morning and gave it a rake to move some of the leaves and it felt just tacky enough and warm enough to warrant sowing some grass seed. So today I've put down the first seed of the season.
I then got the roller and Joe and me gave it a good rolling and it was so successful and looked so good that Joe wanted to have a knock about and a bit of a bowl on it, so we had a bit of a bowl and a bat.
We've now got a couple of scenarios that might happen, as it's warmer the local kids might get on there and play football on the actual wicket just simply because it is the smoothest bit in the paddock. If that happens while the earth is still soft the damage potential is still high. If this fine weather continues obviously the surface will dry and harden and any damage that occurs will be increasingly superficial. On one hand though we also need fairly damp weather so more rain would also be good in order that the germnation of the seed is successful. Realistically we can just keep our fingers crossed and hope that the paddock doesn't get much use and that we have a mixture of rain and sunny weather which is what you'd expect at this time of year.
We'll just have to keep an eye on it and see what happens. Whatever happens it's still going to be a big improvement on what it was like last summer.
Joe and Ben nets
I got to see Joe bat in the nets and he did really well only getting bowled once in 48 or so balls at 42 mph and I managed to film it. Ben seemed to be bowling okay despite being knackered after swimming this morning with his mates. So all in all a good day.
