raining like cats and...

Waking up to thunder and a downpour. That’s okay, Sunday morning is farmhouse cleaning time. And though I’m not a fan of cleaning (who is...), I’m a fan of clean, so that when the place sparkles, I am happy.

This morning, therefore, I am made happy.

And then it’s a cat and mouse game. The rain stops. Outside, everything is wet, bountiful, saturated. (Ed tells me he has never seen the pear tree leaves so shiny, the fruits so plentiful...)





I spend a profitable hour planting and, too, seeding. The routine is that weeds come out, flowers go in and then lastly, seeds fill spaces that could benefit from, say, a burst of cosmos or a trail of nasturtium.

But there is another clap of thunder, followed by a downpour and I retreat indoors, hearing the message loud and clear – the Gods are angry! Quit running away and finish your paper work!

But I don’t finish because two hours later, it’s quiet again. The ground is too soggy to plant, so Ed and I attack weeds by the sheepshed. Selectively.  I long realized that if I am to be happy at the farmette, I have to look away from the jungle that grows by the barn and shed. We’ve brought most of the land under some semblance of order, but this one place – where raspberries are still galloping in random directions and creeping Charlie and burdock and every imaginable weed has set up residence, smothering any worthwhile plant in its path – this strip defies good intentions. 

There’s a small flower bed along the path to the shed -- one that I planted a few years back, and it has a gorgeous lavender bush and a Russian sage and a few random lilies and a dazzling cloud of golden coreopsis and I weeded them this afternoon...

 

...and Isis played with the pulled catnip, getting nice and high on the taste and smell of this heady plant, and it was rather a pleasant spell...

...and the rains stayed away, against all odds. I brought my peanut butter sandwich and cup of macchiato out to the picnic bench and we watched the chipmunk come out to assess what fine meals had been planted for his own consumption.

After, I had to retreat inside, to again pick up my work. But not before surveying the front of the house where, right now, lilies of the valley are growing in wild abandon. I clip some and stick them in an old olive oil bottle from Sorede. 

If you haven't sniffed on a lily of the valley stem lately, do so now. You may never recover, but you'll be better for it.