Rain, Rain Go Away...At Least For Just A While!
The past few weeks have reminded me of a Ray Bradbury short story titled "All Summer in a Day". A young girl moves to a new home planet where the sun comes out only one day for an hour every seven years. It rains the rest of the time. When the day arrives for the sun to shine, the "bad" local girls, who don't like the new girl, lock her in a closet so she can't see the sun. I feel like I've been in that closet for weeks now! And it appears our dreary, drippy days will continue in the near future....I hope not for seven years!
And speaking of long waits, 17 year locusts (cicadas) may pay us a visit as the weather warms up in the next month or so. They have red bodies and eyes, unlike the regular black and green cicadas we see every summer. Believe it or not, there are some scientists out there who would like to know when they visit and munch on the trees and the gardens in your area. If you are interested in helping, report sightings to http://project.wnyc.org/cicadas
While I usually keep growing vegetables the subject here, it's also very important to grow a mixture of flowers in your garden area. The flowers, especially showy ones like zinnias, petunias and sunflowers, attract mason bees, and maybe even some surviving honey bees, to your plot. Their presence will greatly enhance the pollination of the not terribly showy vegetable plants you've started.
The blackberries are in full flower. The raspberries are just starting to get their smaller white buds. Although the blackberries flowered before the raspberries, the raspberries will have ripe fruit before the much larger blackberry fruit.
Like many gardeners, I'm sure, I go out to our garden late in the evening just to take one last look before heading off to bed for the night. Just last week, I went out at about 11:00 p.m.. The night was cloudy and our solar lights hadn't been charged due to the sheer lack of sunshine during the day. It was calm and quiet. After just a few moments, I heard a soft padding sound...a light clicking behind me. I froze! All I could think was that I was being visited by an opossum, or even worse, a skunk. And I really didn't want to take a chance on the skunk possibility. Click, click, click. I was as immobile as a stone statue. Click, click, then plop, plop. They came closer. Then PLOP on my head. Raindrops! What a relief that was! I'm glad no one was with me because I really felt silly!
Hope to see you again soon. Have a great garden week!
Comments or questions? Contact me at chuckscards42@hotmail.com
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