Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Good News and Bad News

The good news is that it is raining. The bad news is that it is raining.

So, my husband was off for the week, and he said something about there being work in some other district, but no one had offered it to him. And I said something like we should get ready to go in case they call and offer a trip someplace interesting. And he told me where he thought it might be if someone did call, and that didn't seem very interesting, and I couldn't leave the plants that long anyway. But I looked at the weather reports, hoping that it was going to rain or something so that I could go if they did call. Only about ten percent chance of rain, with no little clouds or lightening icons or anything like that.

I pretty much forgot about doing anything that would have allowed me to go on a trip, cause even if there was a trip I wouldn't go cause of the plants. I went back to slowly digging this hole that will be the future home of a fruit tree. Not a bad hole now, even if it did take a really long time for me to get this far. The kitchen is a total mess and the rest of the house is mostly just as bad, but I have a mostly dug out hole.

So Monday we were out doing something, and my husband said he needed to stop at Home Depot. And as long as we were at Home Depot, I thought that we might as well get four more of those blocks, and so I picked four that didn't look too bad and put them in the cart before we went off to look for screws and whatever else my husband was going to look at. And then one of the workers said something to us, like did we need help or whatever, and then there was the short conversation that you'd expect to have with someone at Home Depot when you don't need any help (or don't want to admit needing any help), and it somehow ending with him saying something like "Yes, but it's going to rain."

And I thought that was a weird thing to say, cause I knew that it wasn't going to rain, cause I had looked at the reports. Okay, I hadn't looked that day and maybe I hadn't seriously looked the day before, but I had really looked maybe the day before that and there was nothing really about rain, and it didn't look like rain outside when we were out. Outside was the awful heat that is usual around here, with maybe some clouds but not yet thick enough to be useful, much less really looking like rain.

So we went on with our business, but I made a mental note to look at the weather again, cause maybe it was supposed to rain later.

Anyway, while we were still in the Home Depot, it did start raining. By the time we found all of the right screws and such and looked at whatever else my husband needed to look at, it wasn't just raining it was really pouring. And he said something about not wanting to take my stuff out to the car in the rain, but I wasn't having that, cause there's this covered part where you can load stuff without getting wet, you just have to wait your turn.

So he ran out to get the car and I waited with the stuff, and he lined up with the other cars. But somehow that didn't seem to go in an orderly fashion, with the only way you moved up the line is if the person in front of you gave up and left. So my husband finally sees and opening and pulls up, but on the outside lane, where you still get wet on one side, and that was the side where there was space cleared for the blocks. And rather than push stuff over to the other side, he just got wet loading the blocks. And he seemed a bit mad about it, but he's the one who couldn't be bothered to move the stuff to the other side, so, whatever. But he didn't stay mad, and we went home.

So of course there's this serious downpour in the next town over where the Home Depot was, but not at home. At home it was quite dry. So we get all wet but our house doesn't get any rain, which means that my plants didn't get any rain. So that was a bit disappointing. Then I remembered having left the shovel and such outside, so I went to collect those, and then we checked our phone messages.

We'd missed a call from his work. They had a job for him, but there were no details. He called, but they'd already found someone else. I don't know if it was a week away someplace cool or just a day around here. Maybe we are better off not knowing anyway.

So that night it did rain here, which is good for the plants, but not good for me trying to finish digging that hole. I can dig after a light rain, but I can't dig in the mud after a lot of rain.

The next day, we got more rain. Anyway, we've had rain off and on, so the temperature has been mid-eighties instead of high nineties, so that's good, and once we even took advantage of the nice weather and went back to the arboretum, where we learned that you have to leave the park at five, not just that they stop letting people in at five. Oh, well. We still had a nice half hour walk.

So it's a bit sad that when I was thinking about it I didn't get ready for a trip and we weren't here to get that message, just in case, cause there has now been enough rain that I could have left for the week if I had wanted to. And that probably won't happen again for a long time.

During a break in the rain, a neighbor had a new driveway poured. I don't like her much, but I hope that the rain doesn't mess up the concrete.

Anyway, the rain is all good for the plants and everything, I just wish that it had waited till I'd finished digging out the hole. Some of it will have to be done over again now, and I'll have to wait til sometime next week before it is dry enough to do that.

One of my readers was saying how she wished she could see my garden. But there is nothing to look at. We did this video last year, and I'm afraid this is pretty much what the garden still looks like. It is more in the planning stage, still. And what work I was doing got interrupted by stupid stuff like being ordered to cut down my honeysuckle. So it looks even worse, cause there are no vines to obstruct a person's view, and no flowers to speak of. It is almost all vegetable plants, and I'm not getting much veggies now. Most of the popcorn plants look good, but I won't be getting the popcorn for a long time yet. For some reason, the squash just didn't work out. It is too hot for the tomatoes, but maybe I'll get a few later. I have a few peppers, but not as much as I'd like. The sweet potatoes look nice, but you don't eat them until they finish growing in fall or late summer. And there are no beans yet. The main thing that I'm getting now is the cucumbers. And I like cucumbers, but I just can't do that much with them when that's all I've got. I'm just trying to keep everything alive until the fall when I can collect the rest of the stuff.

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