Week 20 - Yet More Rain

The highlight of the week was the weather. Yes, more rain. It seemed like every time we turned around, it was raining again. And that was after last week’s record rains. The whole world was a soggy mess. This also coincided with the annual steam outage on campus, which meant no heat. We froze in our offices but lived to tell.

Wednesday was a window between storms so I took the afternoon off and gardened, focusing on getting my veg beds prepped and planted. After stopping at Lorri’s to pick up seedlings and eating lunch, it was 2:15 before I got outside. But I worked like a dog and got it all done – sifting compost, turning the soil with the compost and planting everything. At 5:15 I gave up thoughts of getting the berry bed done and went inside for a shower and dinner. All good. All that’s left is the berry bed, planting all my containers and putting the few perennials I’ve bought into the ground. While the rain hasn’t cooperated with my time off, there haven’t been any really hot days yet so I’ll take it.

The weekend brought even more rain so I went to spinning since I couldn’t garden. It was good to see people and from there Andrea and I went to Omaha. She needed to pick up her sewing machine and I wanted to do a Trader Joe’s run. When we got to the sewing machine store at 4:30, I had the brilliant idea to see if Imagiknit, the yarn shop that moved to Omaha last year from Hastings that neither of us had been to yet, was still open. We called Lori, who is a regular customer, to see if she knew when they closed and she was actually in the shop! That clinched it and we headed there. Well, of course I bought some yarn – mostly sock. Did you have any doubt? The owner is a gem and stayed open late for us, chatting away as we shopped. Only when we left did I realize I had met her before – years ago when I went to Hasting’s after a bridal shower for Helen’s daughter-in-law. I had completely spaced but enjoyed her back then too. Knitters are simply the best people!

Since it had rained hard on Saturday and then again overnight, there was no gardening possibility for Sunday beyond slogging across the soggy lawn to pull a few weeds. I took advantage of the wet to get busy inside and just started going through paper. By the time I was done, the top of the desk was clearer than it’s been in years. I also prepped a ton of food for the coming week, which always feels good, and made Ed’s pie for helping with the ceiling fan. In the spirit of getting things out of the house, I then delivered the pie, dropped Andrea’s sewing machine at her house (I’d dropped her at a restaurant in Omaha for a date so still had her stuff in my car) and then drove out to Lori’s and fed all my produce scraps to the girls. Only then did I head out to mow, having waited as late as possible for maximum drying, but it was still like walking on a sponge and I had to mow the backyard twice in different directions because the grass matted to the underlying mud on the first pass. It wasn’t the best mowing but I got it done and was showered and enjoying dinner by 7:00 when Call the Midwife started, content in my progress and how good my house looked.

This has been a weird spring – cooler than normal and wet, wet, wet! Despite making big progress in April and not going to Europe, I still feel under the gun. But I still have two weekends in May so my annual goal of having my gardening done by May 31^st is still an option. I live in hope. Not that the forecast for Memorial Day weekend is dry but what can I do? Time to go with the flow, which is literal considering all the rain. Happy spring!