Dibble Dibble Dop
I normally get up about an hour and a half ago to do some writing, stretching and get the lunches made. This morning after Chris came in to wake me, I must have drifted back off, or more accurately, slammed back down into the depths, because I didn’t even hear his car go down the driveway. It’s perfect back-to-sleep weather.
In the middle of the night I woke to thunder rolling over the neighborhood and the soft patter of rain on the porch roof outside my window. A while later I woke again, more thunder and what sounded like a scream, but might have been a sound from my dreams, or a cat. I don’t know. But the rain was luscious and I listened to it as my heart beat slowed from racing to neutral, and I slid back under the surface. I felt so grateful that the forecast of a 20% chance of precipitation (that usually means not a single drop for our area) turned into a long, slow night of steady, light rain. Exactly what the plants needed.
My mind started to worry over the logistics of setting up a drip irrigation system next door but I told it to pipe down and let me sleep. Then I thought of the rain barrels still standing out by the garden at the old house, and how the shed isn’t even ordered and the woods still have to be cleared, so the rain barrel system I have in mind won’t likely happen for this season. I reminded myself that these are the thoughts that are making me sick from stress. Then I envisioned the rain garden I want to make in the front yard where the land dips down towards the driveway, to catch the house runoff. In the end, my thoughts must not have had enough strength to take hold, and I soon fell back into a luscious, velvet underground.
This is the first rain we’ve had in nearly a month and it’s still pitter-patting on the roof. They’re calling for more showers in the afternoon, with much cooler temperatures. Let’s hope the whole summer doesn’t play out with month-long dry spells, or I’ll be standing out there all night after work, with the hose in hand, slapping at mosquitoes and trying my best to conjure up clouds with my funky version of a rain dance.
In other news, I ordered my iPod last night. It’ll be here next week, with this engraved on the back:
listen, dance
Thank you sweet family.
Technorati Tags: rain, draught, garden, sleep, irrigation
"In summer we live out of doors, and have only impulses and feelings, which are all for action, and must wait commonly for the stillness and longer nights of autumn and winter before any thought will subside; we are sensible that behind the rustling leaves, and the stacks of grain, and the bare clusters of the grape, there is the field of a wholly new life, which no man has lived; that even this earth was made for more mysterious and nobler inhabitants than men and women. In the hues of October sunsets, we see the portals to other mansions than those which we occupy."
~Henry David Thoreau
May 16th, 2007 at 9:50 am
Oh my. I stumbled across your site a couple of days ago when I searched for google images of tomato stems (in an effort to find info on ‘collar rot’) and I noticed you were in northeast Ohio where I grew up and a few other details that I was able to connect with.
But reading your entry this morning seems almost eerie.
I too slept in an extra hour and a half this morning, enjoying the sound of the much needed rain and the arrival of the cold front with the house to myself.
And I too dread the prospect of a hot, dry summer; nobody really wants to see me doing my rain dance.
May 16th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
Must be something in the air! It was a very spooky yet wonderful morning.
So sorry about your tomato plants (if that’s why you were searching). collar rot is one disease I haven’t dealt with. Yet.
So where do you live now?
Cheers!
May 17th, 2007 at 7:47 am
Ah, collar rot.
Best I can figure it’s the fungus that causes ‘damping off’ in seedlings but in older plants it can look like the base of the stem has been pinched. My problem is that I start my tomatoes, etc. indoors and we keep the temp pretty low. The porch faces south and gets warm when there’s sun but here in the Syracuse area, as is typical of Great Lakes weather, we have a lot of cloudy stretches.
Fortunately it’s limited to a couple of the Costoluto Genovese and one other and I sprayed all the slicing tomatoes with their first dose of Serenade this week.
Ciao.
May 17th, 2007 at 9:38 am
Nothing better than sleeping in during a storm, unless it’s an iPod in the garden. Beware, the iPod in the garden begets $300 noise cancelling headphones for lawn mowing!
May 17th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
My thoughts have also been going towards thoughts of a long dry summer with me permanently hooked up to the hose to keep my plants alive. I don’t have time to devise a drip system. For as wet as Oregon is supposed to be, the summers are usually hot and dry as a bone.
I wouldn’t mind some of that thunderstorm, I love them.
May 17th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
I was at a campground with my youngest daughter and 3 other teen age girls. Sleeping in a double-wide cabin — listening to the rain on the roof the mouse in the kitchen, and the gentle breathing of 3 girls. They had the soft deep sleep faces that remind you tha they are children. Precious.
xo
May 18th, 2007 at 5:07 am
Yikes, not me thanks! The lawn is the Teenager’s job!
May 18th, 2007 at 5:08 am
Angelina, I had no idea Oregon had hot, dry summers! I pictured it virtually dripping with luscious water all summer long.
Do you not get thunderstorms there?
May 18th, 2007 at 5:09 am
So that’s where you were, Debra! I hope you had a lovely Mother’s day and weekend.