Rain

May 16,2006
Today is one of those very slow, dripping kind of days. We've been blessed with two good heavy, lasting rains in the last few weeks. Things are brown and dying in so many places that I'm doubly grateful for the rains no matter when they come. so many times I think I've watered adequately but after a long soaking rain, I notice that things just seem to jump into growth.

I love the "golden dewdrop" flower (Duranta Repens) ..although it took several months to understand why its called that. The seedpods/berries do look like deep golden dewdrops. This spring I cut this back severely to make mowing around it easier and covering it during next year's frosts easier. Butterflies just love this bush - no wonder its another called butterfly bush.

We went to a family type lunch on Mother's Day - it was fun and all the people were wonderful. I had planned to bring some watermelon plants for them to plant near their manure pile from the horses... hoping for great yields!!! We had all sorts of animals when we lived in Maine and so had wonderful gardens. Most was composted before being spread in the garden and anything volunteering in the area thrived.

There was a fairly large stand of horseradish behind our barn. Our only experience with horseradish came in very small jars. We belonged to an organic gardening club in New Gloucester, Maine - absolutely wonderful, back in time town. Someone told us how to prepare the horseradish. They did forget to mention that you NEVER grind horseradish INSIDE. It took more than 8 hours for the volatile fumes to come out of the kitchen so anyone could enter. We've laughed so hard at our inexperience back then. I'm thinking that had we eaten it, we may have gone blind!!! No doubt the manure piles were great encouragement to those plants. There was also a stand of rhubarb about 10 feet from the pile. Another surprise bonus crop.

One daughter has horses and so has a pile which is probably wonderfully composted toward the back. The only thing holding me back from running over there with pails to harvest some of this is lack of energy and very large Arabian horses. LOL. Suzi is home these days. Perhaps I'll call her and we can do it together. She isn't intimidated by those curious, helpful HUGE animals.

I have several years worth of Country Living and Gardening magazines which have provided so many hours of dreaming and planning. All those years of being sick and having to stay in that temporary apartment were filled with gardening sereptitiously. Now that we have another piece of property with amazing opportunities for garden beds, the energy has flown. How do you balance having the time as you're older, but not the energy of being young?

My grandmother had beautiful gardens - even after her broken hip. Her secret was a y oung boy who came after school 2 days a week. He did her weeding and any other thing that required being up close and personal with the ground. I have two foam swim mats that are wonderful for sitting on the ground. Its the humorous picture I imagine in getting up that prevents my gardening from the ground when everyone is home in the neighborhood.

I have so many seeds to start. I love starting seeds, but my energy and the plantlets readiness doesn't always coincide. Gardenweb.com has so many gardeners who exchange plants that perhaps I'll start plants and just offer them to anyone who comes through this area. I would love suggestions on what to do with my yard from anyone in exchange.

The mulch seemed such a good idea, but I'm finding it makes it so much harder to put things into the ground. The mulch will have to be raked back and the newspapers pulled up... where I laid them down. We have an abundance of worms in this yard.. aren't we blessed? The concensus on Garden Web was to lay wet newspapers down and then mulch. No doubt it would have been a wonderful idea AFTER having planted the plants. LOL.

Sometimes I wonder whether its the flowers I love, or the birds and butterflies they draw.. or perhaps an equal love at different times. Nothing calms my spirit more than sitting on my side porch in the morning with the cool breeze and the cacaphony of birdsong.. its amazing !!

Today is a day to read and look at other's gardens... I need to go to the store, but find that my window refuses to go up or down in my car... and so I've covered it with plastic until the rains subside.... I need to find how to get the cleome to germinate. Never had good success with them. We started so many hard to start, fine as powder seeds when we had the greenhouse.. but now I can't even get the cleome to sprout. Off to learn.