A Walk Through a Rainy Day Garden

Wow, May 26, and there's been no sun today. Continuous rain. I know we shouldn't complain with tornadoes and hurricanes and all the loss going on elsewhere, but this week and next week are our "vacation" weeks....before we begin luncheons during the weekdays, aka as our "days off" from the nursery business. The seed orders are slowing down, the bills have been paid (yesterday's headache) and the last of the hop orders for this spring will be completed tomorrow. So, I'd been hoping for sunny days, my time to spend out in the garden, making them continue to get better. It is really hard to accept this indoor confinement!

We've had some beautiful sunny days where we got to work outdoors, and that lost taste of sun makes gray days even harder.. In the sunny "gift" days, most of our Corsican Mint seed crop beds have been weeded already for this season Rolfe and I (in our older age) have committed to an hour of "work after work" and that's when a lot of these beds got completed. Many say weeding is not a good job, but to me, using our muscles, hearing the birds, seeing the blue sky toward evening that we here in Oregon seem to always receive as a reward for enduring the gray days, noting the instant improvement, being with the land and laughing as the chickens come to watch and hope for our weeds to be gifted to them for treats just seems to put life in the right perspective.

Bethany and I have been hard at work getting the wedding hillside second-weeded, and ready now for new plants in riots of color...when the ground dries.
We have begun to plant the herb garden. It is already alive and growing more beautiful every day with the perennials quietly asserting themselves, the new bark mulch, the new black mulch on the beds. It is truly a stunning sight.
Back (a day or two ago) Rolfe and I in our late work hour weeded our brick pathway and what a difference! The Elecampagne in the middle has already sprung to knee-high and as often happens, some night creature comes to munch on its abundant leaves. Our plan (tonight?) is to install some "yellow sticky cards" and maybe we can catch the offending insect and identify and alleviate the problem.

But, today, rain, to get my outgoing orders down to the mailbox, I had to add a coat (for warmth) and a hat (due to rain)and it's really hard to make progress. The thing I do note, though, is that the plants do fine with lack of sun. They sit quietly growing in the warmth of the days, the gentle sprinkle of the rain. We even had thought we might get our food garden tilled a little early this year. The rototiller was non-functioning, so we rented one, began the task and had to scrap that plan as the soil is still too wet, and still more rain predicted. We covered the main body of the food garden with plastic - we don't want to have to regress in our drying-out process. It looks like a blanket of snow covering the waiting garden.

On Saturdays, I go to Farmers Market. But I seem to remember our spring Saturdays as sunny and warm and pleasant, sometimes even needing sunhats, sunblock, etc. Now, days ahead I have to wonder if the weather-guesser is right and it will be cold and wet.

The gardens are now 22 years old. Crazily, we are now 22 years older too!. How can time have passed so swiftly? And, perhaps it changes our memories - along with the bad weather,. we now must deal with the high gas prices and the bad economy, less folks are hopping in their cars and coming out.We are lucky to love to enjoy our gardens ourselves, so few have made the effort yet this year. And yet, those who have come have seemed to see the beauty that is created here.

~ Posted by Janet