November rain

 The trouble with weather forecasting is that it’s right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it. ~Patrick Young

We are in a rain pattern for another day (day 4 to my reckoning).  My gardens are a total disaster. I stepped in one of the flower beds and nearly lost my garden boots!  A lot of suction wanted to swallow them up.  The garden soil is mostly very fine sand over a layer of red clay.  Quite an unpleasant mix.

The last I heard, this is the wettest year on record.  Oddly, the drought map still shows this area as light drought?  How much rain do we need to be declared a swamp?

I see a lot of areas of landscape and beautiful beds that are not under water.  I have to remember that I knew we were at the bottom of a hill when I started.  Back then, it had been so dry I was  moaning about things burning up.  This year things drowned in March through May and regenerated and burned up or lost all their leaves in self preservation?  I am not sure.

The Salvia Greggii bed which was the center piece when I began has gone through cycles of lovely red and pink blossoms, butterflies, hummingbirds .................................
The leaves all fell off.  mid summer. all looked dead.  I did dig out one and then decided to wait until cooler weather.  Voila' they greened up and bloomed just before rain started.  A light frost didn't bother them at all. This rain will probably finish them off.

Taken in early Summer

My plan is to move them anyway, so will wait and see.

All the rain totes and buckets and trash cans are full of water.  I cannot bear to pour the precious moisture just in case dry weather sets in,  From now on, I have to dump the water. No place to store any more.

I am in the midst of "resizing" garden area.  The first thing to go seems to be the gravel paths.  Maybe not such a good idea as water flows over, making muck and sinking places in the path underneath the gravel, thanks to ever present grub which is food for my enemy the mole.

Some things I have learned?  Sunflower seeds  WILL germinate in cool temperatures. Nights in the 30's. I had a favorite bird feeder with a cage around it to discourage larger birds.  It worked very well.  The sun took its toll as the plastic tube that holds the seeds had weakened and cracked.  I wasn't watching since the other feeders are of a more substantial plastic. That said, this one was  ¼ full of seeds when the rain started.  The seeds germinated and the expansion of seedlings and moisture caused the tube to split.  I would like to get a tube to replace the split one as the cage surround is fine.

The cage on the left

The weather forecast for the coming week looks promising for drying out.  There is an awful lot of cleaning up and redoing of flag stone path in court yard.  I had to move stones to allow water to flow faster. It worked, but now they have to go back into the path with some digging out to lower the stones for future rains.  It should have been done long before.  So, now, knee pad and gloves and I will do as much as I can. May take a while...

 The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Weather forecast for tonight: dark. ~George Carlin