Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Rain, rain, go...on about your business. No, really.

About midnight last night, I heard, through my sleep, the sound of rain falling into the gutters and washing down the downspouts around the house. A very soothing sound to hear when you're in bed and (according to my husband) hogging all the blankets. And in a dry climate, such as ours, we should really be rejoicing over moisture falling from the sky, in whatever form it chooses to take, but I am really only mustering happiness over the fact that it hasn't snowed - yet, at least.

The anti-vermin cage appears (from a drive-by) to be undisturbed for a second night, although I guess you could put that down to the rain as well. We got the wall-o-waters back in place around the tomatoes, in case this does turn colder. And the shallots I planted a week ago seem to be very well content - the one that had sprouts when I planted it seems to have doubled the size and number of them. I hope that means bulblets, or whatever shallots do to produce more shallots. Garlic sprouts are starting to appear, too.

I think we're in an enforced wait-and-see mode now. Seeds in place, with protection as appears necessary, and it just remains for water and sun to do their work. The green and purple beans are starting to pop up, but we haven't seen signs of the dried beans yet. I hope they're just slow, and not some weird hybrid intended only for eating (I bought them from the bulk bins at Whole Foods, since I didn't want a lot and not all of them came in seed packets). Nor have the second lot of spinach or carrots surfaced yet - I would expect them to show up pretty soon.

Nice thing about natural irrigation, though. It waters between the lines of leaky hose, and helps sprout those seeds not directly beneath the drip. So I'll try to do a bit more rejoicing, even though rain and cloudiness seem very unnatural around here, and hard to take in the spring when I want it to be warm.

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