April Showers

More rain, what a wonderful thing. I emptied out all the rain barrels yesterday afternoon and had to break out the hose to water in a few of the things I planted. After close to an inch of rain last night, the two trash cans were full again, I emptied those into 10 five gallon buckets and I'm thinking the trash cans could be full again after the downpour we just received. Needless to say- we've still not made any further progress on our rainwater catchment system, oh well, at least its raining.

I've been thinking about all the people around the world that have to carry water everyday just for cooking and drinking let alone agriculture. It's a meditation for sure to fill the watering cans by dipping them in the rain barrel and then make repeated trips back and forth to the garden to water the young plants and seed beds almost daily. I really do want a better set-up where we can at least gravity feed through a hose. And we clearly need a much greater storage capacity.

When I decided to do a daily post for April, I felt sure that there we be something new everyday to talk about and there has been. Here is a shot that includes a hot pink dianthes in the foreground, just beginning to bloom, a very late blooming daffodil called Fragrant Rose, it isn't really fragrant but its nice and tall and is still blooming after all the other daffodils are finished. To the right you can just see a blue columbine and in the back our weeping redbud which is a fabulous plant. The redbud has a curvy trunk that's gorgeous all winter, then it puts on this pink show in the spring and in the summer it is covered with large glossy leaves that reach to the ground. Then I call it the "Cousin It" tree because it looks like a giant green lump.

You can see the trees are really greening up in the woods beyond. With all the rain they will pop for sure and soon it will be a thick lush forest of spring green on every side of our yard. Oh how I LOVE this time of year!