So the rain started early this morning, and has been pretty constant, so far. The rainfall warnings include possible flooding in places, including our region. Our region is huge, though, and contains quite a few rural municipalities. Where we are is unlikely to have much, if any, where we are. The newly graded roads, however, are probably going to be a real mess!
With the rain, I did short rounds this morning and skipped switching out the trail cams, since I won’t want water getting into the cameras. Short rounds was good, though, because…
… a lovely surprise!!!!
My husband actually came out with me!!!! He caned it rather than drag his walker into the rain, but he did it! I could see he was really struggling near the end, but he did it. I honestly can’t remember the last time he went outside and walked around. It’s probably been at least a year.
As we went around, I checked the beds and we had a lovely surprise in the bed of Purple Caribe potatoes.
The first plants have emerged! Just two, so far that we can see, but this rain is going to be so good for them.
When I was mowing yesterday, I’d put one of the raised bed covers over the German Butterball potatoes, then forgot to take it off, so my husband helped me lift it off to the side, so they could get some rain, too. I had also forgotten to put the extensions on the eavestrough downspouts back after mowing. I’ll have to check the new basement later, and see if that caused any problems. The one corner was already damp and has a fan on it. That was the corner a rain barrel had been left to overflow during a wet summer, and is why we now have weeping tile problems. This basement used to always stay dry, even when the old basement was wet, but not anymore. My brother had found that corner so wet, for so long, there was mold. He cleaned it up with bleach, and when we clear the basement, we also bleached that entire corner, but it still gets wet at times.
So forgetting the extension on the downspout above that corner is not a good thing!
When feeding the outside cats, I didn’t see Broccoli, but we still went around to the garden shed. If I think she might be in there with her babies, I knock on the door, first. Opening the door still startles her, but she doesn’t always run out completely. She gets in and out through the hole in the back wall, and there’s an old chair in that corner. Sometimes, I can just see her butt under the chair, as she waits while I put food out for her. Today, she did actually leave the shed, so I took advantage of that to pick up her kittens and straighten out the self warming mat for them. My husband got to see them, too. If it hadn’t been raining, I would have passed them to him to hold while I straightened out the bedding. More human interaction would be a good thing, but not if they get too chilled in the process!
Speaking of chilled, as I write this, we are at 5C/41F – with a wind chill of -4C/25F! Our expected high for today is supposed to be 8C/46F According to the weather radar, we are under the light rainfall area, with the moderate rainfall passing by to the west of us, with a few places in the south and west of us, getting occasional heavy rainfall. In total, we’re expected to get 50-60mm of rain, which is roughly 2 – 2.5 inches. The rain, with another high of 8C/46F, is expected to continue until about noon tomorrow. Starting Sunday, things are supposed to warm up and we’ll have dry weather for at least a couple of weeks. Hopefully, that will be enough time for us to get those beds reworked and ready for planting! We should probably lay plastic down to help warm the soil up faster, too. Looking at the long range forecast, there are still going to be cooler nights in the second week of June. Not cool enough for frost, but cool enough that I’d want to find ways to protect our more heat loving transplants.
Which won’t even be in the ground for more than a week.
Pretty much everything we do, revolves around the weather.
If the really long range forecasts can be trusted (they can’t), we’ll have only one day of rain in June, and none in July. June is supposed to have a few highs reaching or surpassing 30C/86F, but right now, July is supposed to have highs of 25C/77F, every day. Literally, every day except the first four, which are supposed to have highs of 24C/75F. So you know that’s going to change a lot by the time we get there!
Well, that should be good for all the squash and melons we’re planting this year! Plus the eggplant and peppers. As long as we can keep up with the watering. One of our best gardening years was a drought year with heat waves. I’m still amazed by how many melons we got that year. It was so hard to get them properly watered on the squash tunnel, and the plants were so spindly, and they they produced so well! This year, they will be closer to the house for easier watering, and have better soil conditions. I am hopeful that we will have a much better gardening year, this year, and actually harvest enough to do some canning and preserving of things other than tomatoes and onions!
Time will tell.
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 
A bit funny, last year we had a major heat wave and drought and it was my best year for pumpkins. I completely neglected them, failed to water them, let them get over grown with weeds. We joke about how our most successful crop was the one we didn’t participate in at all.
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Isn’t it funny how it works out that way, so often? 😄
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