Rainmaker

June has been terribly dry. On Sunday, Lissa came up and installed the new submersible pump in the cistern.

Working in the sun on the hot cement cistern in the 97 degree heat can't have been fun for her. I watched from the nearby shade. I fitted the plug with a swim cap made from a balloon. All I have to do is plug in an extension cord to get the water flowing.

That night, it was delightful to be able to water the garden without worrying about running up the water bill. I gave every veggie and flower in the fenced garden a long drink of the cold water. The pump gave even better water pressure than the outside faucet.

Back in May, when the rains were adequate, I emptied both 55-gallon barrels into the cistern  many times. That sounds like I hefted them on my shoulder and poured them carefully into the stand pipe on the cistern. The procedure was much easier and actually possible. Having installed faucets in the bottom of the barrels, I merely connected the garden hoses to them and poked the ends down the standpipe.

This story would be a triumph but for the rain which arrived the following day. Not just a little rain, either. The National Weather Service was right, we did get one-tenth to one-quarter inch. There was a bit more to it. It was one of those strange thunderstorms, full of crashing lightning, torrential rain and loud thunder that seems to park in one location, unzip the cloud contents and be loathe to move on.

That went on all day and night. I emptied the gauge at bedtime, four inches of rain. This morning, there were another five and a half inches.

Parts of the garden were in standing water. The corn had swooned.

These seed pods of the Toy Choy were being left to ripen.

The daylilies appeared glad to get watered, at last.

These sunflowers didn't appreciate nine and a half inches of water. It was a good thing they didn't have their big seed heads yet.

Ever the conserver of water, I began at once to empty the barrels into the cistern. Except for the scary cloud to ground lightning, I could have emptied them many times over.

More rain is suddenly in the week's forecast. There doesn't seem to be a shutoff.

If You Can't Stand the Heat

We are having a big heat wave. At least, I hope it is a wave and not what the rest of the summer will be like. It seemed a good time to catch up on my baking. Just today, I've turned out beets from the garden, followed by my honey wheat bread, then chicken, then Chicken Divan. The oven has been going non-stop.

Fortunately, it hasn't added a single degree of heat to the kitchen. I used the Sun Oven. The long days and outside temperatures well above ninety degrees have made this not the insane project it sounds like.

It is really too hot to do anything outside. I zip out to turn the oven occasionally to get the best fix on the sun and quickly dash back inside. In the relative cool of morning, I hung out laundry and harvested the beets, broccoli, carrots and the first zucchini for my elegant repast.

I've been inside, knitting on a wool Fair Isle vest in the air conditioning. It's a sampler project, some motifs being more pleasing to the eye than others. It's sort of a learning experience. Doing this knitting outside would guarantee a heat stroke.

The Chicken Divan was delicious. The only drawback to dinner from the Sun Oven is I can't have my usual late dinner, after sunset at nine p.m. Like hay, food must be made while the sun shines.

A Week at Grammie's

Another summer, another visit from Molly. The older granddaughters have either lost interest in coming up to Grandma's or are now engaged and working between college semesters. How did that happen?

Molly loves learning new things. This time, it was how to knit socks. Even knitting is better outside. With the help of a YouTube video, she learned how to make an afterthought heel.

We do the same things, even work the same puzzles, but it's always fun for us both. She will be back for another week in August. Grammie was even motivated to blaze a trail to the river on the ride-on mower.

 The river was above Clam Beach, but convenient seating was provided by some limbs left by the recent high water.

Beau felt we spent entirely too much time sitting and enjoying the peaceful river. He went off on adventures and occasionally checked to see if we were okay.

We feasted on veggies from the garden. There were turnips, carrots, broccoli and cabbage. We love them all. I'm sure if people could sample fresh veggies they would find them much tastier than the ones that are bred to ship.

There was Sun Oven bread to bake and eat. Molly made pancakes for our breakfast. She mastered cooking when she was nine and had a little baking business. Being extremely smart, she learns new things in a flash.

There was a failed cardigan that I unraveled, leaving lots of kinky yarn. We built a gizmo to hold the yarns, then washed them. Another YouTube video to the rescue.

After that, we hung the wet skeins out on the porch, where they dripped and dried in the sun. Wet wool is better outside, too, so the air isn't redolent of damp sheep in the house.

We have lots of fun talking and doing astronomy with our telescopes. We checked out Jupiter, Mars, Saturn and some nice fuzzballs, the globular clusters.

Staying up late isn't a problem for Grammie, who doesn't have to do anything tiresome in the mornings, like go to a job.

The Race is On

Between now and the Summer Solstice, June 20th, all growing plants are in fierce finish line mode. Who will win? I hate to say it, but it's usually the weeds.

Just this morning, I pulled this tub of rampant weeds from one of the flower beds. This haul was all from the six foot border seen in the photo. Turning my back for just a minute allowed them to rise up to worship the sun.

Weeds, unlike flowers and vegetables, don't mind being severely crowded. They long not for air circulation around them. Without actually having elbows, they shove other herbage aside and shoot ever upwards.

It's a good thing that I actually enjoy weeding. Years ago, I realized I could learn to love weeding or gardening would be a dreadful chore. Even though I came to understand that I could always plant more than I could keep weeded, I still am outnumbered on the weeds front.

Weeding isn't just a one time thing. I've already weeded the entire lily bed twice. Eternal vigilance is the price of gardening.

Mulch is great, too, but even that has to be replenished every couple of weeks because weeds are sprouting the moment the contents of the mower grass catcher is emptied onto the ground.

Fortunately, there are the early veggies. This delicious Early Round Dutch Cabbage and Little Sweetie Snow Peas finished in first place yesterday. Actually, it was while I was mulching around the cabbages that the weeds rose up in the peony border.

Then there are the Gaillardias. They are annual flowers but act like weeds. So many have come up this spring from last year's planting that I've had to yank many of them out.  It feels cruel.

 They are pretty but soon lounge over on other plants, plants that I've taken lots of trouble to grow from late winter, like these Bishop's Children Dahlias. A small fence attempts to hold them in check. These daylilies are Stella in Yella, from Roots and Rhizomes.

Perhaps I should have planted the Gaillardias in the middle of the grassy front yard. If anything could hold their own against invasive Bermuda grass, it's them. They would simply flop over and smother the grass. I'll try that next year.

The time for planting is past. Now is the time for racing the weeds to the Solstice.

One Against the Road

This is on the way to my place. The pavement is patched and shabby, but lots better than the gravel road that goes on from here.

If I had good sense, I would stay inside the house when it's dry. There's this problem with road dust. Actually, it's timing. Timing is everything. When there has been rain, there is no dust. When there has been rain, the soil can't be cultivated.

All of the above explains why my cough has returned. I had to get the garden tilled for the tomatoes and peppers. . There were potatoes to hill.  Mowing was required in order for the garden to have mulch. It was imperative to get plants in the ground while it was perfect for planting.

The Criterion apple tree was loaded with baby apples. I spent many hours, over three days, on a ladder, snipping off the excess apples with a small scissors. There's nothing like looking over my head while wearing trifocals and perching on a stepladder on a steep hill. Did I mention having vertigo?

All my endeavors coincided with the maximum amount of road dust. All the farmers had the same idea. They rumbled by on enormous tractors, hauling huge discs, planters and other implements for mass planting. They created great clouds of airborne dirt.  Before that, the road grader guy bladed the gravel and exposed the dirt to the strong wind, always blowing toward my place, which is too close to the road. Trucks of every weight limit and size went by so fast that I listened to hear them hit the bridge after not making that last bend in the road. There were 18-wheel  grain trucks on unknown missions, since there is no harvest in spring. Smaller trucks pulled twin tanks of anhydrous ammonia, the non-organic answer to fertility. It was like a buffalo stampede.

Every day, I got out a fresh surgical mask. I donned it when a vehicle was heard approaching. Where I went wrong was I miscalculated the amount of fine particulate matter that remained suspended in the air.

Last September, I had microbial pneumonia, also called Walking Pneumonia.  It coincided with the harvest stampede. I coughed until after Christmas. I was all better until spring gardening fever got me. For my sacrifice, I do have things coming up in the garden.

The broccoli and cabbage plants are looking great, after I applied a little liquid organic Thuricide to the chomping worms.

These miniature bok choys are Toy Choys. They are adorable and tasty

Although I have ten acres here, what I have is a little city garden. It's on one of the less steep slopes, and gives me a variety of veggies. Sharing the spotlight here are potatoes,broccoli, cabbages, beets, onions, carrots and corn. One dandelion is trying to sneak in.

The Little Sweetie snow peas are just starting to bear.

The Love Lies Bleeding are strangely pretty. It has not escaped my notice that I don't have to have a vegetable garden or more flowers. What's the fun in that?

Listening to a Tornado

There have been several Spring thunderstorms here lately, with lots of rain and strong winds. The weather radio alerted me to the coming storm, so I was able to bring all the potted tomato, pepper and petunia plants inside.

Then came a tornado warning for the little  nearby town. The sky was dark to the southwest. I put on wool socks and rubber boots, grabbed my purse and the big flashlight and headed toward the fruit cellar.  Then I saw it. Hanging down from the dark sky was a wedge tornado. It wasn't touching down and I couldn't tell if it was rotating. There was no time to take a picture.

Down in the cold fruit cellar,  I heard what surely sounded like a tornado.

One other time in my life I heard a tornado. It was 1957. We had gone to the basement because the sky looked creepy. My mom was going to the A&P grocery store in nearby Ruskin Heights. However, she didn't like the look of the sky. In those days, people didn't depend on Weather Radio. My older sister was at some school function. We thought she'd come home. We heard what sounded at first like the overhead garage door opening. It was a manual one; perhaps they hadn't invented the motorized type. Anyway, the sound didn't quit.

Later, we learned on the t.v. (yes, it had been invented) that a tornado had wiped out that grocery store and a subdivision. Most of the houses didn't have basements. 37 people were killed.

The sound is like a roll of thunder or a train, but there are no breaks in the sound. It just goes on and on. It's very loud. I had my cell phone and left word for Chris and Lis to check on me. There was a strong wind and some hail. Then I believe that the tornado, sensing that I wasn't coming out, moved on.

Once heard, it's not a sound a person forgets. There is nothing like it.

The next day, I found this living hickory broken at the base. The tornado sound was so loud that I didn't hear it fall, though it wasn't far from the fruit cellar. The damage here probably was just wind, because other trees were not affected. Tornadoes are not so selective.

The tornado was listed among several in the area that day. It had touched down and uprooted some trees and did some structural damage right around the time when I saw it.

Lots of people in Missouri who remember the Ruskin Heights tornado are quick to seek shelter when there is a possibility of a house being dropped on us. We don't have the hubris that keeps us watching an approaching funnel to see what happens.

R.I.P. Rooster

Rooster is seen no more. I spotted what was either his body or a big pile of his feathers lodged far up in the shallow underside of the playhouse, inaccessible to me.

I almost got new chicks at the feed store, but decided to just manage on the three bothersome hens for the present. They have a habit of scratching up flower beds in order to make dust baths, never the same area twice. More little fences are in order.

Life goes on for the hens after the passing of Rupert. They hang around together or go their own ways, occasionally laying an egg. I believe they designate a layer every few days so they appear to be useful. Or it could be only one of them is still laying. Buffy produces a soft-shelled egg occasionally.  It's very quiet without Rupert's crowing.

On a happier note, some much-needed rains brought out the morels.

The day before yesterday, there they were, popping up big and easy to find. The undergrowth is springing up with the rain, so every day they will be more elusive.

These were drying some out a bit on top, but they were quite delicious. This is a regular size dinner plate.

The rains were most welcome because every day that it was dry, I was out digging and planting and thought my labors would never end. However, I did get the main garden cultivated and planted to beans, black-eyed peas, zucchini, corn and parsnips.

The farmers were driving down the gravel/dirt road as if to a fire, creating clouds of dust. I was forced to wear a surgical mask whenever I heard them coming, because my place is on the north side of the road and the wind is usually from the south.

Even though there could be a later frost, I took a cue from the farmers and went ahead and planted the potted flowers. That freed up the pots for transplanting the tomatoes and peppers. They are getting bigger out on the back deck and front porch.

Suddenly, all green things have broken loose. Mowing will be the order of the day when it dries out a bit. Meanwhile, there was another shower last night, so Lissa is coming up for a morel hunt. I hate to admit it, but she is much better than finding them than I am.

The Early Garden Struggles into Being

The strong winds have been a little rough on the early garden. I've even had to water four times. The hoops did warm the soil and I got the onions, Melody Spinach, Easter Egg Radishes and 4-Seasons lettuces planted.  Little Sweetie snow peas (Stokes) are ready to grow up the sticks. A few days ago, I found a spot for the Swiss Chard, soon to appear.

This bed has more leafy greens-to-be, onions and some larkspur at the far end. Against the fence is the Cottage Corner bed. Every few years some of the perennial flowers get overtaken by grasses and I dig them up and plant some other perennials. This year, I said farewell to a Shasta Daisy and one Missouri Primrose.

The blue bucket has a cracked bottom, so rainwater drains right out. This corner area was used for trash burning by the former owners. I dug out the rusted burn barrel bottom, but every time I work the soil, old rusty nails surface, along with odd things like watches. I toss all the junk in the blue bucket.

The broccoli and cabbages aren't making great growth. It could be the desiccating high winds or the eighty degree days followed by freezing nights.  They will come through. I put  buckets over them the other night when the temperature got down to twenty-three degrees. They can take a bit of a chill, but nothing akin to midwinter. I could cover them with the hoops but they don't like heat.

It's amazing that more people don't garden. It's so relaxing.

Lining Up on the Runway

I'm just waiting for the frost-free date, whenever that might be. Meanwhile, some of the plants have gotten too big for their britches. Those guys, like the Evening Primroses above, have been put in bigger pots., which they quickly grew into.

The plants in the red pots are butterfly bushes. They are tricky to grow from seed. When one hundred seeds are offered in a package it's a tip-off that the seed will be as tiny as dust and thinning will be a challenge. I managed to get four started this time. Colors will be a surprise.

In the back are Love Lies Bleeding. Sounds gory, but I always wanted to try them. They are from Stokes Seeds.

The new babies are some Lady Seymour Pinks. I got a little carried away and started two dozen, for a border edging.

Last year, grasshoppers ate the Bishop's Children (that really sounds gory) Dahlias, so I had to have some more of those. There are petunias, gazanias, coleus, portulaca, Early Sunrise Coreopsis, Pacifica Vinca and Victoria Salvia waiting for clearance to take off.

Now that it's April, everyone can go out  in the daytime. Finding spots out of the fierce wind has been challenging. A person would think there would be one lee side of the house.

This is the time when I ask myself why I needed so many of any one plant. The answer is I'm a gardener. That's what we do. Finding room for all these guys, plus the many day lilies I ordered, will be fun.

It's been rather dry, so I've had an opportunity to dig up some weeds and cultivate for the new arrivals. Actually, that's putting it too mildly. Basically, I knocked myself out with the weeder, the turning fork and Tillie, the Mantis tiller. There were great tubs of weeds that I pulled up. Somewhere in one of those piles is my favorite hand hoe, lost in the frenzy.

The Swiss Giant Pansies got to be planted in the real dirt, because they supposedly can take a light frost. I was very excited. The fence is to keep the hens out.

Of course, the trick is whisking all nine trays of plants back inside when there is sudden hail. So far, it's only happened once and the hail was tiny.

A Senile Rooster

Poor Rupert is unsteady on his legs these days. Not only that, but he is acting nuts. He sometimes has trouble standing and other times he squawks loudly and runs crazily for some distance. At other times, he hides under one of the porches or stuffs his body into a yew bush.

At first, I thought the strong winds were catching him in the tail and propelling him. That theory proved incorrect when he still ran when it was calm. (His head has not been cut off.)

He sometimes loses it entirely, falls down on his tail, flaps his huge wings and squawks loudly. The most unfortunate part of rooster's dementia is that he no longer stays with the girls and protects them.

                                              A Ga-Ga Hen
Buffy, having been pecked on her head one time too many by the rooster and his accomplice, the Rhode Island Red hen, has taken to walking backwards. Her latest nutso behavior is to run squawking around the yard. A few of days ago, the routine sounds of  distress changed tenor. I found Buffy in the jaws of one of the neighbor dogs, who was unable to resist running prey. Enough feathers were pulled out to fill a small pillow.

She stayed in the nest box for days. Yesterday morning, I found Rupert  stuffed in the box with her, absently pecking her on the head. He looked like he was trying to remember the rest of his routine. I pulled him out.

Yes, I know I should put him out of his misery or leave him out for a coyote meal. With all his eccentricities, he does manage to wander back to the coop at dusk. He no longer can get on the roost, making him a restless,  roostless rooster. He beds down in the straw or in one of the nest boxes.

Rupert is only three or four years old, but in chicken years, it's time to cull fowl.