Monday, June 29, 2009, 06:17
Storm Clouds
Storm Clouds
Thursday morning I was awakened abruptly by the sound of strong wind and hard rain hitting the roof. It was 7 a.m. and I needed to get up anyway. Randy had gone outside earlier and had taken pictures of the storm approaching.
It rained hard for about 20 minutes, then tapered off but then started raining again. I had no choice but to go outside and feed the horses because I had to get to the newspaper office. Isabelle stood in her shelter and peered out at me, reluctant to come out in the rain. Eventually she decided getting wet was worth it so she could eat her grain. I was just at the point of thinking I should take her feed tub to her shelter when she came out to the fence.
Kajun had no problem coming into the barn and out of the rain to get his feed.
By the amount of water in Isabelle's feed tub, it appears that we got about an inch of rain.
It has been so long since we've had a hard rain like that (years, in fact), that I was surprised to see water had come in under the garage door in the basement -- enough water that it made it across the floor to the floor drain.
The sky cleared off later in the morning, and by Thursday afternoon we had bright, sparkling sunshine. Friday was a bright, clear day as well. Even though the temperature was 90 degrees, it did not feel as bad it did last week when the dewpoints were up into the 70s and the humidity was high too.
Randy found some drought information on the Internet, and nearly half of Wisconsin is considered to be in a drought. The drought began in 2003, according to the information Randy found. The winter of 2003, as I recall, was when we had the last good snowfall, and it has been downhill since then.
Even with the rain we have gotten recently, we are still in a drought. We will have to get above normal precipitation for a while in order for the subsoil to become soaked up again.
It seems that either drought or rain, the weeds in the Isabelle's pasture are doing quite well. Too bad horses and people cannot eat pigweed, alyssum, and ragweed. Randy has been going out with a "weed whacker" -- a device with a cutting blade at the end of a long handle -- and has been hacking away at the weeds. The tool is a little more substantial than the weed whip and is considerably heavier. It's effective, though. It's just that it makes my shoulders ache to watch him.
One evening this past week, Randy also was able to get a couple of pictures of sunsets. I especially like the one of the backlit clouds. They look like they are on fire.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Wednesday, June 24, 2009, 04:34
How Hot Is It?
That's the wonderful thing about living somewhere where the seasons are so variable isn't it? Because when the seasons are variable, a person ALWAYS has something to complain about.
The weather is a great conversation starter, too. You can walk down the street in town or run into someone somewhere, and you've instantly got something to talk about: the weather.
And right now, we're all talking about the heat. The last few days, it has been 95 degrees with a humidity of about 100 percent and a dewpoint in the 70s. Ick.
All I have to do is walk outside, walk across the yard, and I'm drenched with sweat. It looks like someone dumped a pail of water over my head. And that's before I even get started doing anything.
On the positive side, the garden seems to be responding to warmer temperatures. Unfortunately, not a single carrot came up that I planted earlier. So, Tuesday evening I decided to hoe up the row where I had planted the carrots and plant them again. As long as we have a reasonably warm fall, the carrots should do all right. The thing about carrots is that the longer you leave them in the ground and let the tops freeze a couple of times, the sweeter they get.
I suppose the ground was much too dry when I planted the carrots the first time for them to germinate. I hope I have better luck now because I'm sure I'm at the end of the time when I could plant them and still hope to get a crop.
The thing is that it was so hot Tuesday evening, I was downright dizzy by the time I got done planting the carrots. Good thing I had help. My little tabby cat, Bobby Cat, insisted on flopping in the row and generally making a nuisance of herself. I simply could not have gotten it done without her.
As for the rest of the garden, the beets are sparse and so are the lima beans. The onions look good, though. And so do the rutabagas and the radishes. The beans are coming well, and so are the pole peas. The squash is holding on, too. As long as we keep getting some rain once in a while, I might end up with a few vegetables.
LeAnn R. Ralph
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