A Bright, Sunny Day? Pthffftt!

I was so looking forward to the sunny, warm day forecast for today.  The plan for getting a satisfyingly fantastic, huge amount done in the garden was ripe and rarin' to go on my schedule.  The time spent outdoors was going to be so welcomed after our couple of days of rain and grayness and gloom and perfect biting bug weather.

Isn't gonna happen.  The day has dawned without a trace of sunshine, it's very cool and I'm afraid to venture out to see how bad the bugs are.  The weather report is now for "mostly cloudy" today and heavy rain tomorrow.  The inch-plus of rain we had in the rain gauge yesterday morning has made the soil soggy wet, and it seems like today's weather won't help it dry anymore than yesterday's dampness did.  Ugh.

This early summer weather of ours has been very wet and cool.  Great, I suppose, if I had planted an acre of peas or lettuce or spinach for market.  But even those cool weather crops need some sun for growth.  And of sunshine, we've been sorely lacking.

No problem.  (Grump, grumble, snarl.)  I can occupy myself quite well, thankyouverymuch, with tasks to be done other than in the garden.

One job will take me into my husband's workshop (aka my seedling starting center -- thanks to the kind, patient, sharing man I live with) starting broccoli and cabbage.  No, 'tis not for a second planting but rather this season's first.  I found out last year that if I didn't plant these particular veggies until around the first of July, I tricked the dreaded white cabbage moth which lays eggs in the plants which results in (ish-eeuuww-I-can-hardly-stand-to-think-of-them) worms at harvest time.  With this timing the broccoli and cabbage aren't available hosts at that particular cycle of the moth.

Also because some of our red and green cabbages get stored for the winter in the root cellar, when they are planted early and mature earlier, our root cellar isn't cold enough for good storage.  It took me many years (yes, bona fide slow learner here) to figure out this method which seems to work quite well.

Last year I put the broccoli and cabbage seeds directly in the garden soil and had only about a 50% rate of germination.  So this year I'm planning it so that I'll start the seedlings inside and have sturdy little, pampered, reared-under-grow-lights plants to set out in a couple of weeks.

Now I just have to mentally overcome another day of heavy, gray, cool weather and make the best use of my time.  But who knows?  Maybe the folks who don't seem to be able to reliably forecast the weather will be wrong (again!), the sun will come out accompanied by a warm breeze, the black flies will refuse to venture forth out of their dark, hidey-holes and I will be able to work in the garden.  This time of year, there's no place I'd rather be.