We're having a light but constant rain. The best thing that could possibly happen here where the clay is slow to absorb water but is also majorly reluctant to give any of it up once it gets wet.
And I see signs of life! The shallots and garlic my grandson helped me plant a couple weekend ago are an inch or two tall now. Peas and beans are about 6" high and ready to start filling out the chain link fence they're growing against as a makeshift trellis. A dry root peony I put in has tiny pink sprouts on it. The blueberry blossoms have turned to little green berries. And I've got blossoms on the San Marzano tomato I'm growing for the first time.
Heirloom tomatoes are how I got the gardening bug. I used to plant far too many of them. This year I'm trying a plum, a cherry, a black tomato (LOVE those smokey suckers) and I just bought a Pineapple that I haven't put in yet. I think I have room for one more but can't decide what I should balance my assortment out with...
We were away for a couple growing seasons in a row and my compost production is WAY down since no one takes it seriously or attends to it like I do. I normally have 4 huge piles going -- I double up the size by using 2 enclosures for each pile.
This year I have one full working pile, one (very small) mostly finished one and I just set up a new one yesterday with the mulched stuff from a major tree trimming. That left the fourth spot -- which gets some nice afternoon sun -- vacant. That's pretty sweet ground too since it's been occupied by compost piles for a decade or more. I put a Black Cherry in there and figure I'll have enough room for 2 more plants. That's where the Pineapple will go when the rain stops. When the season's over and the vines dry out I'll just pull up the support towers and pull a compost enclosure around them and get my most recent pile started with the carcasses of the vines.
Finally warm today, could have been yesterday, but the March Lion was roaring at 35 mph. The frogs are singing and the ground is TRYING to dry out, but that is foolish bc CA's storm will hit US with rain on Monday.
We have had our Spring flooding early. Didn't hit us, but DD's town had roads closed. Their 1920's home wasn't touched. EVERYBODY used to know where you DON'T build, but clever housing developers found their way around it and have opened up those properties over the years to development. THOSE are the places that flood every single year...after the developers have cashed all of their checks.
When I was little my parents built a home in a development. We were told never to play where they were building houses, but we did it anyway. We all knew where nobody should build, but they went ahead and finally built on those lots.
DH tells me that he grew up close to a pond in the woods that was spring fed. NOBODY BUT NOBODY thought you should built a house near it, so they didn't. Somebody came along and built their home right on top of the spring!!
Go figure...
We got another two feet last night ~ and ~ it's coming down 6" and hour ``` The snowblower doesn't like to through this stuff ```
They say: Eskimos have 1000 names for different kinds of snow ~ I can believe that ~ we have quite a few ourselves ~ not sure what to call this lot ```
whispers, flutters and sometimes even plops of snow. the sound they make... i've heard them. walking in the night calms, sometimes even with the moon out and snow coming down. magical.