Thursday, April 7, 2011

Rain with a chance of rain

 

So far this month has been full of failed plans in all sorts of unexpected ways.  Too many changes of plans for me to be able to think clearly. So this lead me to scramble to get the garden filled before May 16th so I am ahead of last year. After trying to get a load of dirt each day last week and only finding 2 sunny days, I thought Saturday we could try for 10! Ha! Then I had a planned and forgotten breakfast and my high hopes diminished to 4 yards... and then it was raining and I was happy for 2.
This lead me to think it was a good idea to get a truck load of soil Wednesday. At lunch it was glorious and sunny, birds chirping and bees singing(?)
Travis wanted to work on the beam(almost done!!) So I said to just fill the truck on his way home and I would unload it.
I got home and the sky looked like this: 


And then it hailed so I waited that out til it turned to a medium rain. Once you are wet, it really doesn't matter too much.
And then the lightening
....and thunder!
As I stood shaking my fist at the sky & cursing under my breath I looked toward the windows where Travis was working inside, hoping he would feel pity and come save me. I was in a position in the truck bed, that is exactly in line with him standing on a ladder thru that window and he saw me.
He smiled and gives me a thumbs up!!
I gave him a finger up too, but he had already gone back to work.

And then the hail started again. And more rain.
I did eventually finish and luckily Travis didn't take any pictures because I was one dirty mess.


Here is a little evolution of the garden in the last  few weeks.

Below we have finished the hole we were digging and then the rain started to fill it. I am seeing a trend here...
Travis got a new pitch fork to help the clay drain. Along with adding drainage, he was plucking out rocks.





Like 3 more buckets of rocks.


 Here we are after 1 yard is dumped. Oh boy, that's gonna need alot of filling in.
 And after 4 yards and some rain I did not see the mud coming...
who knew dirt + rain = boot gobbling mud 6 inches deep. It looks so innocent in this photo.





 


 Piles I made after unloading the dirt last night. I surely was not going to level it out after unloading in the rain. This is the 5th yard in the hole we dug. Only 5 more to go!






 Here is the muddy path between the truck and the hole. This WAS the garden last year. It will be this year too as soon as we get there.

 I had to interrupt Travis' work to help me clean up and put the fence back together. I was so done. 


He wasn't happy coming out in the rain to hose out the truck 
in his pj bottoms so he sprayed me whilst I made comments from inside the house.

 
And this is what is happening outside the fence:
Dead bodies Dirt we did not sift in piles under tarps in the background, 
and rocks getting washed on the sifter.

It is as much fun as you can imagine!

This is the pile we have left. We actually have several uses for the rocks once they are cleaned and sorted in different sizes.
Hey--Don't laugh! At least I'm not trying to sort in to colors!









I will report back once I have something exciting to say! 

7 comments:

  1. Now I appreciate these types of posts!! We too have struggled with cold weather and rain and I have just the worst possible drainage imaginable. It's a battle but it's fun as hell ... right?

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  2. I cannot imagine having worked outside yesterday. It was awful out there. I think you forgot to mention it snowed too. I've tried getting the same type of help from my husband when I was outside and he was inside, it never works for me either. Tomorrow is supposed to be nice, but hopefully you can do something more fun outside than unloading dirt.

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  3. Oh man. You certainly win on perseverance!!!

    By the way, it always takes more dirt than you think to fill something--anything. I was reminded of this as I pushed wheel barrels of soil Sunday.

    I hope you get some good gardening weather soon.

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  4. Aaargh! I am totally falling behind too. I bought lots of cool plants at several plant sales in March. Are they in the ground yet? No! So much to do, but I am a wimp. I quail at the thought of going out there when it is raining, or even just misting and temps are in the low 40s.

    You made such great progress yesterday, and you are a brave girl being out there in that weather.

    I hope tomorrow is as nice as they are predicting. I thought today would be an improvement, but woke up to temps at freezing and snow on the ground. You will eventually have an amazing garden once again.

    I have a pile of rocks too, and a compulsion to sort them.

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  5. Oh, my, you poor girl! That looked like a horrible experience, and one I can truly relate to since I've been there, done that more times than I care to recall. I hate it when the weather (and my husband) won't cooperate on my scheduled work time. Last summer we went through the monsoon season and ended up canoeing on the front lawn, what a mess.

    I think your new garden is going to be wonderful, and I can't wait to see the bounty it will produce for you after all this hard work.

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  6. I wondered how your dirt sifting was going as I darted out during breaks in the unseemly weather to sift compost. I am finishing filling my last two raised beds in today's sunshine before we move on to more hell and high water for yet another week.

    Also, another blogger emailed me about something and I got her confused with you and so asked her how the dirt sifting was going and she hadn't a clue what I was talking about. That was pretty funny.

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  7. Well now you've made me feel just downright horrible about justifying that the weather is why I haven't done a single thing in my yard yet. Maybe I'm just lazy?

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