Thank goodness it rained. Watering crisis averted! All plants received some water. Perhaps not enough, but still, it gave them a thirst quenching lift.
My walk to the barn is stormy! I'm not one to head out when there is lightening, but the hens needed to be freed and fed and I needed a fresh bundle of lilies-of-the-valley for the breakfast table. And, too, I love looking at the lilac in full bloom, when it is drooping with rain!
It's a different side of a garden -- the wet one that hides secrets from the casual passerby.
In a strange way, it reminds me of the first movie I went to see in New York when I moved there to be an au pair and to finish college -- the Garden of the Finzi-Continis. It was the first time that I thought of a garden as a place that shelters, that keeps from view both the outside world to those within, and those within from the outside world. I had learned much about World War II in my last year of high school in Poland, but my focus had been a Polish one. The movie was almost like a start to my stepping out of that paradigm and into a broader one. Suddenly other stories, complicated ones, coming from complicated countries became important. In the movie, the story is of an Italian aristocratic Jewish family, as Fascism grips their country. It's a haunting movie that stays with me even now as I listen to the birds in the quietness of our own farmette garden and I look at the drooping flowers of the lilac bush.
Breakfast, at the kitchen table. With freshly picked lilies.
Rain. The plants needed water and I needed time away from the garden. My mom requires extra attention at the moment. She is in a downward spiral mood-wise and that does her no good. Indeed it's fair to say that it does no one any good. Figuring out how to deal with this takes time. At present she is not capable of making decisions for herself. That then falls on me.
Too, I return to lend a hand over at Steffi's House. This one:
My friend's project requires going forward with some choices and I'm good at that! I meet a bunch of people there for a consultation about windows. It turns out that this is one of the big decisions that you have to make when you buy a new house -- what will cover the windows? All sixteen of them here? My advice is simple: stick to neutral and keep the price down. The house already will eat up a chunk of money. Go easy on it!
And, too, I needed to catch up with my friend in Warsaw. I thought I could squeeze in a few morning minutes for a Zoom call but of course that's just impossible. I love our conversations too much to limit them to a few minutes.
Before very long it's time to pick up the kids. We never got the whopping winds nor the tornadoes that spun through the states to the south of us and for that I am very grateful, but oh my did the rains come down when the kids left the school!
It was all very localized. By the time we got back to the farmette, the rains had stopped. Indeed, the downpour never touched our land. We had rain, but no downpour. What a difference a few miles makes!
(Today, he wants to listen to the war story with his sister...)
Stormy wet days are like that: you dont want to move too far away from where the others are hanging out.
And there you have it -- my rainy day. My beautifully wet rainy May day.
