I spotted this snail outside the window yesterday morning, when I pulled back the curtain to check the weather. It wasn't raining yet, but the skies were the most promising they'd been all week.
I'm not entirely sure what this plant is the snail is enjoying so, but I have strong suspicions it may be some variety of honeysuckle. It's growing out of the bed of vinca which surrounds the feet of the tall arbor vitae by the gate to the backyard.
In the border, the columbine plants are joining the ranks of those who are beginning to sport tiny flower buds, giving me hope for the the days ahead.
And that lily I showed you earlier in the week has now double in height. Here's a second one which was out of the frame in the other shot...as well as a small cluster of leaves between them, which I'm pretty sure is a bit of that Oregano I brought from Eastham.
Behind the house, the apple blossoms have become to open and the oriole wasted no time in coming by to drink the nectar of those first flowers.
I didn't get to post last night, as we had a big night at work and I was a bit tired and uninterested in cyber-things when I got home. The late afternoon and evening had brought us a nice steady, but not heavy rain, which made me smile, since I'd been hoping for some all week.
In the earliest hours of the morning, there were a few rumbles of thunder and a single flash of lightning...and the rain grew a bit heavier. A comforting sound on the roof as one is drifting off to sleep...as long as you don't give too much thought to what else might be going on as a result.
I was recently com mended for my posi tive out look and upbeat perspective on life and gardening.
This morning, I pulled back the window, saw the newly-flooded garden and couldn't help but feel a little bit like a liar.
As you can see, the garden is flooded worse than I've seen it, except maybe for back in the dead of winter. It seems that all the extra soil I've brought in this spring has settled down and has been for naught against the sort of heavy rains we saw last night, and which appear to be in our forecast from now through Wednesday.
So here's the angry and frustrated gardener, supposed to be marking two weeks without a cigarette (excepting a cheat puff here and there), trying to smile when he really wants to smoke half a pack or more before starting to pot up the whole damn garden to move to some higher, drier, less expensive yard somewhere.
There's over an inch of water out there in some places, as you can see. That little oregano plant and assorted others are nearly completely submerged, the feet of all the others wetter than they ought to be.
For now, I'm not seeing any ill effects and I do know by now that the water will drain off fairly quickly...but at some point, certain species are going to start dying out in this location, so I will have to come up with some alternate plan.
Meanwhile, it's time to go to work.
7 comments:
Ooh, Escargo! pass the butter . .
OK, I know it's before breakfast for me and I do not eat snails for breakfast. ( maybe cold pizza or even a bite or two of speghetti )
It looks like you have been getting your share of rain these past days. Our land is so porous the rain never sits on it but is immediately sucked up and sent along its way to the aquifier system. This is all glacial scrapeing from the Ice Age and we have tons of rock that come up in the Spring not unlike the flowers and the weeds.
Have a great weekend.
Ha ha...so it's just for breakfast that you pass on snails, is it? I'll stick with the cold pizza, thanks!
The water does drain fairly quickly here...it had already receded just a little by the time I left the house...and I know its duplicitous to wish for rain and then bitch about it. I'm just a little disappointed that I'll need to raise it *so much more* if I want to keep this from happening every time we get some rain.
Your area sounds like the Adirondacks, where we used to joke that if I wanted new rocks for garden edging, I only needed to sprinkle a little grass seed around or stick a shovel into the ground. : )
Oh, by the way, congratulations on your two weeks (almost)smoke free. After coming home from Vietnam with a 5 1/2 pk per day habit, it took me five times to quit, but I finally did it and haven't touched a cigarette since 1970. Once you get a bit further out from the habit of smoking, you'll feel better.
Even though I was not physically addicted to nicotine in the cigarettes, I remember being at a dinner five years after quitting and when we were finished eating, I reached to my shirt pocket abscentmindedly, for a cigarette! My body was still in the habit of moving in a well known pattern after all those years. ;-) Good luck with your journey, you can do it.
Five and half packs!?!?! Wow...
Thanks for the words of encouragement...generally, this attempt has been going well. I figure even with those momentary cheats, I'm smoking so much less.
I do already feel better as a result, which is the positive reinforcement I need for seeing it through!!
And I'm very happy to report that the sun has come out this afternoon!!
Oh NO...Thats not good my friend.
Is your area subject to flash flooding, or do you tend to get a lot of rain? What a headache if you had to shift them all out and build the garden to a higher level. If I was there I would pitch a hand no worries.
Sorry to see this Grag!
Ah, I am so sorry, my friend. It's important for me to be reminded of the heartbreak that comes with gardening as well; it's so easy for me to wax rhapsodic about an experience when it's only a fantasy in my case (and one or two happy houseplants, perhaps). Periodically the squirrels in my sister's and brother-in-law's garden will destroy any blossoms that are red (I haven't a clue why). This will cause Tony to mutter "poison peanuts" for a few days, but so far Mary has kept him from succumbing to the dark side.
Rain so often is a strong symbol of 'feast or famine' isn't it. Getting just the right amount is tricky.
I always prefer waxing rhapsodic to letting Gardener Crankypants have his moment, as you may've guessed, Patrick. But I can so totally appreciate the "poison peanuts" sentiment...what a riot!!
Wierd that the squirrels aren't fans of red (or perhaps they ARE).
If only we could get that perfect rain of Camelot: showers every morning, between midnight and six. Past experience tells me that soon we'll go from too much rain here to almost none as summer arrives...so I'll take what I can get...and I'm scheming about canals to distribute the watery goodness around some.
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