Monday, April 07, 2008, 14:05
Wrong Again!
The weather forecast from a Twin Cities television station said we were supposed to get thunderstorms and torrential rain Saturday night into Sunday and that the rain would then turn to snow.
Oh -- it rained all right Saturday and Sunday. Anywhere from a fine, gentle mist to a slow, gentle sprinkle to a slow, quiet drizzle. Nothing "torrential" about it. No thunderstorms. No heavy rain. No water running down the driveway. We may have gotten a tenth of an inch all together.
Snow *is* falling Monday morning right now as I write this, but I don't know how much we will get. The ground is coated with white so far.
But once again -- this does not bode particularly well for an end to the drought that we've had for the past four years. The weather forecaster said this system was going to draw moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. The system may have drawn moisture from the Gulf -- but it did not result in any rain to speak of around here. And that's been the pattern for a long time now. The precipitation slides around us and goes somewhere else.
Slow melt
The good thing, though, is that what little snow we got over the winter melted very, very slowly. There was hardly any run-off at all. The snow melted so slowly that most of it was able to soak into the ground.
If we can't get the precipitation we need, let's at least hope we can keep the precipitation we get.
Oats
Randy and I are planning on planting our five-acre hayfield to oats and timothy and alfalfa this year. We had originally planned to plant corn for the Foods Resource Bank project through our church. But because of the drought, I did not want to plant corn.
Corn needs so much moisture to do well, and with the high cost of gasoline, and the high cost of seed corn and fertilizer, it seemed like a huge waste of money to me. If the field gets 1 or 2 inches of rain per week, it will grow corn like crazy. But if it's dry, it won't produce much of anything. And why waste all of those resources to get "not much of anything?"
If it rains enough to produce a good oats crop, we are planning to harvest the oats. If it does not rain enough for much of an oat crop, we are planning on cutting the oats when it is green to bale oat hay for Kajun and Isabelle.
Either way, if we have harvested oats to sell, or extra oat hay to sell, some of the money will still go to the FRB project. And in the coming years, if we have extra hay off the field, we can sell that, too, and donate the money to FRB. Seems more cost-effective to me than planting corn and having all the effort go to waste because it didn't rain enough over the summer.
Garden
I am getting anxious to plant my garden! We can now finally SEE the garden! Of course it is far too wet to plant anything right now, but I'm hoping that in a couple of weeks, we'll be able to work up the garden and get started.
My seeds came a few days ago. I got some carrot and radish seed "tapes" -- and some of that marvelous Red Sails lettuce seed. I highly recommend the Red Sails leaf lettuce. It is easy to grow. Looks pretty with the reddish tinge to the leaves. It's prolific. And it produces good lettuce leaves for a long time before it goes to seed. I planted some in a tub last year and put the tub where it got shade from the lilacs for part of the day. The shade really helped the lettuce to survive the hot, dry weather. I was still cutting the Red Sails lettuce late into the summer.
Oh, and I got some drought-resistant watermelon (didn't know there was such a thing, so we shall see). And some bushel gourds. Randy and I are afraid the squash bugs will still be around. The bugs destroyed just about every last one of his big pumpkins last year. I'm sure they will probably go after the gourds, too. But if we only have a few gourd plants, maybe we can keep after the bugs to prevent them from destroying the plants. The gourds are supposed to grow to the size of a bushel basket.
And of course I got peas and purple beans. And onion sets. The onion sets have not arrived yet, but they ought to come soon.
And I splurged on a packet of seed for Ornamental Kale. The picture in the catalog showed the heads of the Kale looking like roses. It's been too dry and hot for conventional roses to do very well -- other than the rugosa roses, and some of my wild roses. But the rugosa roses are really closer to wild roses than they are to regular rose-bush roses. Maybe I will have a better chance to get something that looks like a rose with the Ornamental Kale.
Like they say, "hope springs eternal!"
LeAnn R. Ralph
Sunday, April 06, 2008, 06:46
Rest in Peace
The ground is finally thawed out enough that we were able to bury my kitty cat Guinevere on Saturday. The wooden box that Randy made for her after she died on January 1 had been sitting out in the snow since then. But now, since the temperature is above freezing on most days, we figured we ought to bury Guinevere. Saturday was a fairly warm day, mid-50s, with watery, thin sunshine. A nice-enough spring day, at that.
I don't suppose I need to say I cried pretty much the whole time we were digging the hole. Randy was sniffling, too, but if you asked him about it, he would probably say it was something in the wind -- mold spores, maybe.
We had a good start on one hole but had to abandon it when we ran into a large sandstone rock about two feet down. I probed on all sides of the hole with the sod fork, and I could still find rock. So, we moved several feet to the south, dug a test hole, and ran into the same rock. It must be a monster rock.
We then tried digging closer to the lilac bush where Guinevere's brother is buried, but there was still frost in the ground there yet. The hole we were finally able to dig was farther away from Tiger Paw Thompson than I wanted it to be. I hope Guinevere understands.
We finished burying Guinevere at 4 p.m. When we came in the house, Randy decided to lie down for a while. He woke up with a headache in the morning and still had the headache in the afternoon. He had to go to the annual meeting for the cooperative where he works in the morning and arrived home again at 2 p.m. What with the headache and all, he was pretty worn out by the time we finished burying Guinevere.
I sat down at the table to look at magazine. I no more than sat down, and here came Snowflake. She curled up on the magazine in front of me.
Snowflake NEVER curls up on something I am trying to read. It's just not how she operates. But there she was, curled up right in front of me.
I petted her and talked to her and hugged her. Snowflake stayed there with me for quite a while. Then she got up and went into the bedroom and curled up next to Randy. She stayed there until Randy got up at about 6 p.m.
Odd as it may sound, I think Snowflake knew we had buried her friend Guinevere. When Guinevere was so sick, Snowflake spent much of her time curled up next to Guinevere and grooming her and keeping her company and trying to make her feel better. At the very least, Snowflake knew Randy and I were both sad, and I think she wanted to do something to make us feel better. Bless her little kitty heart.
And here's another odd thing. The day after Guinevere died, I wondered if it would be possible for her to send me some kind of sign that she was all right. Instantly, the song "Walking on Sunshine" popped into my head. And since then, whenever I think of Guinevere, I think of "Walking on Sunshine" ("I'm walking on sunshine -- oooo-oooo, I'm walking on sunshine -- oooo-oooo, I'm walking on sunshine -- oooo-oooo -- and don't it feel good").
So yes, Guinevere, I know you're walking on sunshine now. No more pain. No more being sick. No more suffering. I still miss you, though. I am *always* going to miss you.
Rest in peace, Sweetheart. And know that your "two-legged momma kitty" loves you. You and your sister and your two brothers saved my life, once upon a time. While I was busy saving your lives, you saved mine. And that's a debt I can never repay.
LeAnn R. Ralph