Council outdoors workers must be pulling their hair out.

Bob "Minmi Magster" Skelton said "I've never seen this kind of growth".

"Everything has gone ballistic," he said.

"We've had a blanket on the bed, it's been bloody cool. And not a day goes by that I don't go and tip water out of the rain gauge, even if it's only a little bit.

"I have never seen anything like it in the 52 years I've been here at Minmi."

Grass is growing higher than fence lines, while road verges are well overgrown.

"The councils must have their work cut out - it must be more or less the same everywhere," he said.

The Magster said his dad used to say it "takes a drought to make the country come good".

"That's certainly the case after the 2020 drought. We've had good soaking rain, sunshine and more rain - virtually tropical."

He said geraniums growing at the bottom of a stump on his property had been "struggling for the last who knows when".

"Now they've gone ballistic," he said.

He had an old tin kookaburra that his daughter gave him, which he screwed on top of the stump.

"Now there's a mass of geraniums and they've covered the old kookaburra. He's about a foot inside the geranium."

In fact, many of his trees and shrubs have been growing like crazy.

"I do remember one wet time around Christmas 2011 that was unusual.

"But that was different, as we didn't get the growth and it wasn't as long term."

Our story on Wednesday about family walks in the park during the pandemic struck a chord.

Belmont North's Eunice English had told us about life in Scotland in the 1950s when family walks on a Sunday afternoon were the normal thing.

She spoke of walks in the woods, often in parkland belonging to a former stately home or castle.

"My parents walked along together, rekindling their romance," she said.

In response, a friend from the UK, Julie Fletcher wrote: "I remember Dad taking us for walks to the bluebell woods at Dinnington [in South Yorkshire] and picking flowers for mum".

"The kids these days are missing so much, although I do think the lockdown has brought families together," Julie said.

"I see lots of families having walks. I hope they keep doing it after lockdown."

The UK has recently had snow, as well as a prolonged and difficult lockdown.

"When it was snowing, it was nice watching the kids throwing snowballs at each other and the parents throwing snowballs for the dogs to catch," Julie said.

Paints a picture, that.

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