It was supposed to rain yesterday.
The weatherman had been promising “rain on Saturday” all week. After a hot, dry day with the boys, I figured it wasn’t coming. I screwed the hoses back together, pulled the heavy out to the garden and noticed for the first time the heavy, dark rain clouds overhead.
“Nope,” I thought. I’m already out here now, so it’s getting watered.
I started watering the garden. It needed the water yesterday. I bet my neighbors (if either of them see me) will think I’m nuts.
I heard thunder. Sting started to panic and whine. His little feet were dancing like when I see a mouse. I don’t know why he’s so afraid of thunder. We don’t really react to weather here.
“I don’t care if it’s about to rain on these plants. I’ve already started watering. I have to establish the habit,” I tell myself.
I was sweating, but determined. More thunder. Rocky starts rounding up ducks and goats for the evening. We haven’t been as good about watering regularly as I expected. I put up the hose and the boys lumbered slowly after me to the front porch.
“NO! No, Jenny! No!” I’m shouting at the dog as she knocks down my youngest in a glorious ignorant dog-trot. Rocky’s still whistling for the goats, but they ignore him. They’ve made the loop behind the house, past the garden, and are in the front yard again. The clouds are looking like they’re going to bust at any minute, but the yard is silent, like before all hell breaks loose in the movies.
Now I’m walking to the road trying to encourage the goats to go back toward the pasture, but the herd keeps heading the wrong way. Don’t you know that the sooner we get you and the chickens and the ducks and the kids in coops, pastures, and beds, the sooner I can get a shower and call it a day?! They look back at me with their weird, sad eyes and they must know how “over it” I am by the tone of my voice. Finally, they stop at the end of our property (how do they know?) and cross the street, also turning around.
I’m immediately sorry I called them morons because I wonder if I hurt their feelings.
“GO! GO! GO!” I hustle them off, clapping my hands loud and fast. Then laugh because the Ax man is clapping and yelling, “Go! Go! Go!” I guess I do hustle the boys to daycare like that. Another crack of thunder and, was that a sprinkle? Head to the house.
The boys are throwing some dirty golf balls they dug out of the ditch in the front yard. Try not to think of what’s on the sludge that’s covering them. Where is this rain that was supposed to be here? Why do we always seem to get bypassed by all the predicted rain up here on the mountain?
Rocky finally has the animals all in their places and meets on the steps. He tells Sting, “It’s eight o’clock. Time for bed,” and heads to the door. It’s seven o’clock. They’re never going to go for it. Why does it never seem to rain up here on the mountain?
We hear the same protest we’ve heard every night so far this summer, but it cracks me up every time. “It’s not eight o’clock yet. It’s still daytime.”
Please stay this age forever. You’re absolutely hilarious.
Garden Update 7/3/2016
- Something is eating the basil in my container on the back porch. I don’t see any bugs. I did, however, find a wounded bat on the back porch.
- I picked one beautiful baby squash in our garden this week!
- Rocky picked some green beans. There were white flowers all over the plants. This is great!
- Picked seven turnips. Roasted in the oven with potatoes and meatloaf. Yeah! Green tops went to the pigs.
- I let the chickens out on Saturday, but discovered one with a limp neck in the coop. She only stumbled around, but her h
ead was dragging the ground. I could tell where the roosters had pulled a lot of her feathers off her back. We’re not sure if it’s a vitamin deficiency or if she was suffering from the heat. She was in a fix. She felt so terrible she let me pet her because I didn’t know what else to do for her. My husband got her some cool water to drink and then mixed up some chicken gatorade or something. He also made this delightful-looking high-protein salad for her from boiled egg, ham, and broccoli. Sadly, after a few days, he had to put her down. She just couldn’t recover. Rocky is hooking up the fan for the coop this week. - I planted some carrots in a five gallon bucket (Found the idea in a 2007 article from BC Living on Pinterest). Then I planted rainbow swiss chard and radishes in a window box. We have planted radishes four times and haven’t seen a single red bulb this year. This is your last chance, buddy! (I don’t even like radishes but everyone tells me they’re easy to grow. I’d like to have a few more successes.)
Garden Update 7/10/2016
1. A few more squash (and so many beautiful yellow blooms out there!) and one pretty turnip. The colors!
2. 
Wait. What is this? Not a single green bean on a single plant this week? No white flowers? And the leaves are starting to get holes eaten into them? When I water the garden, I’m hitting the leaves with the sprayer to knock off bugs so this is a surprise. I will have to keep checking them at different times of day to see if I can figure out what’s snacking on them. I really wanted to make dinner tonight with squash and green beans from our garden!
3. By the way, I’m pretty sure White Bob had something to do with that bat’s arrival and Orange Bob with its disappearance.
Rocky and I had given it water a couple of days and it was hanging from the screen, but all it ever did was screech at us.
I took a picture, but it’s of terrible quality. I’m only putting it on this post so you can see how many teeth this tiny thing had!
What are you supposed to do with wounded bats? I’d like to be more prepared next time.
4. 5 Gallon Bucket of carrots has 1″ carrot tops, mostly on one side of it from where I watered too heavily and they all swirled together, but I have seedlings! Radishes popped out quickly, as usual, so we will see in 40 days how they do. I’m not kidding: this is your last chance with me, radishes! The swiss chard is coming up beautifully and I can’t wait til the window box is overflowing. Also, in both of these containers, we have a mystery seedling, bigger than the rest. Could be cucumber, could be squash, could even possibly be the luffa plant I tried to grow.
5. The marigolds I started two months ago look like the weeds from the garden. They have no flowers. This is not the first time I have failed with marigolds from seed. Originally, dumping the entire packet into the container, they were supposed to grow into seedlings that could be placed in the big garden to deter pests.
6. And there are two vining plants in the marigold container. They look like cucumbers to me now, so we will see if they produce anything. Maybe I should transplant them. Then again, the shock might be too much. I must grow cucumbers somehow. Since they’re volunteers, maybe I’ll just leave them where they chose to grow.
That’s the Word on the Farm,
but there’s one more thing I have to warn you about…
I know pigs eat all kinds of stuff, and really, they have no discretion whether it is food or not, but I surely didn’t expect my pig to eat a dead field mouse. I accidentally smashed it in half while I was trying to scoop it out of my husband’s kayak with the paddle yesterday morning. I was just trying to let it loose in the field so the boys and I could go back to peacefully watching the ducks and shouting at Jenny to leave them alone!
But I picked up the dead mouse to keep my boys from touching it, and I thought the cat might like it, since he’s always so nice to bring me dead animals.
So I tossed it near the fence where he prowls. The pigs had heard us coming toward the pasture and were already at the fence squealing for some pettings. Flotsam took a sniff at the mouse and passed in favor of some bell pepper. But Jetsam hoovered it up, smacked a few times and it was gone. That pig just ate a mouse. That pig just ate a MOUSE! I just didn’t even consider that scenario playing out in front of my boys and I’m totally grossed out by it.
Well, anyway…It looks like it’s going to rain on the mountain, so I’m headed out to water the garden.
