At the weekend I spoke to an agricultural contractor who specialised in grass and cropping.
His smile was wide and had everything to do with spring rain. He told me when he's doing well the winegrowers suffer. When vintners toast a stellar vintage he laments a slow season.
Mother Nature will of course argue that every shower she cedes, is perfect. There's no such thing as 'unseasonal', or 'freakish', or 'surplus' or 'torrential' or 'light" rain, just rain.
The only person who seemed at peace with it in all circumstances was poet Hone Tuwhare, whose poem Rain, starts with the incandescent: "Rain...I can hear you
making small holes in the silence".
But Tuwhare was unique.
Unless the day comes when every farmer in the region decides to grow the same food, the perfect volume of rain will of course, never fall.
