A Tale of Two Days

Yesterday was yet another frustratingly on again/off again rainy day. By actual count, it rained hard enough to soak everything and drive me indoors five different times. When it wasn't raining, the sun was shining and teasing me into hauling all my paraphernalia back out into the garden one more time. Then, you guessed it, the big, gray clouds would move in and, yup, more rain. About the third time this happened, I just stood looking up at the sky as the raindrops fell in my face and said, "Okay, who's winning here?"

Raining too hard to work in the dirt? I did really try to keep myself productively occupied. I went to recycling and then the local greenhouse to see what I absolutely had to buy since they were having their closing weekend sale. Back home. Hey! Sunshine. Great. Out to the garden. Rain started. Inside to mix up a meat loaf for dinner. Weather cleared. Back outside. Rain again. Inside to make a batch of kombucha. Back outside. Guess what? Rain. Inside to set a batch of bread to rise. Back outside. Drip, drip, splat, splat, run for cover. My spirit was broken. I did something I rarely do during daylight hours. I grabbed my current book and laid on the couch and read. Until I fell asleep for a wee little nap. All that dashing in and out, up and down, out and about was apparently exhausting.

But whadda different day today. Finally had a whole day when the weather cooperated enough that I got a good day's work done outside. Planted three kinds of beans, sunflowers that I've been wanting to plant for two years, a row of dill I had started inside a couple of weeks ago, and a row of alternating marigolds and early cabbage. Finished mulching the raspberry patch and a bed of lettuce. Roy was out all day, too. He did the big job of all the weed whipping --- around all the garden beds, the field garden, the pumpkin patch, the perimeter fence, all the fruit trees, the beehives in the yard, and the flower beds around the deck. Then he mowed all the grass. This is a huge feat and normally doesn't all get done in one day.

When he planted the tree seedlings a few weeks ago, we put what we thought was a flowering crab apple in a triangular section of a flower bed on the east side of the deck. But, whoa, now that the leaves have appeared, it sure doesn't look like any kind of apple tree. So we did a little switcherooney with a seedling (that does look like a flowering crab apple) that he had planted in the open space outside of the fenced in yard next to the wood's line. He also planted the two bleeding heart bushes and three gypsophila that followed me home from the greenhouse sale yesterday.

With luck, tomorrow will be another lovely weather-wise day and we can get the hammock set up for the first time this year. Well, maybe not until a few other things get done first, but I can hardly wait to settle into it with my book . . . and take a little nap.