Ecclesiastes 3:1

April 24, 2013.  It is raining gently.

Winter being my least favorite season of all, I am usually chomping at the bit for Spring.  I can't wait.  I push the season.  I buy 'bedding plants' for the flower beds and vegetable plants for the vegetable gardens too early.  The last few years I have been on-line buying onion sets-- of all things -- way too early. 

I was my usual self in the spring of 2012.  I was buying flowers and vegetable plants. Himself dug out and enlarged the front flower bed and planted perennial early bloomers.  We were out every day, digging and tilling and planting. 

Then Spring came early.  It was 80 degrees in March.  Grandchildren swam in the Lake on March 30, so my journal says.  Himself and I jumped in and embraced that warm weather.  It quit raining.  We were in a drought.  or Drouth, my dad called it (an old-fashioned pronunciation found in the Bible). 

We were in Drouth all summer.

It was dry all fall.

The grass died or went dormant in northern Missouri and in southern Iowa.  The landscape was drab and brown.  The Lake level fell and the creeks were dry.  Even the Mississippi River was low and barges couldn't get up river.  Cracks drew their lines in the Iowa and Missouri dirt and clay and children speculated about digging to China. 

We worried all winter about the lack of moisture . . . but finally late winter 2013 it went to raining.  It rained and it didn't warm up.  If we did have a warm day or two, the temperature plummeted and it rained again.   Or snowed.  And rained.  And snowed again. 

Now it is April 24 (Happy Birthday, Maddie Mae!) and it is raining and the night time low will be about 30 degrees and I am thankful to be reminded ...

"To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven:  A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted." 

I smell dirt . . .

I went home for lunch today and the temperatures had warmed into the high 60s maybe and there was no wind.  Himself had been spading and tilling flower gardens.  He had "turned the earth".  Turned it over so the dry top soil was on the bottom and the moist, warming black earth was on top and just walking down the sidewalk, I could smell the earth.  Yum! 

         "In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt."
                                                                                        - Margaret Atwood

 

Usually when you "turn the garden" you see lots of worms and you are lucky if you do as worms are good for the garden.  The worms loosen the soil and make it richer.  We were fortunate when we moved here that Mrs. Thompson had enriched the beds and probably 3 generations of landowners before her. 

Today, the early blooming plants just popped!

Some burst into bloom; some just popped leaves and stems above the ground.  The lawn is green and thick.  The trees and shrubs are swelling with leaf buds.  

A few more days like today and the bleeding heart that just today broke through the ground would have looked like this picture. 

Instead, the weather men (yep, gonna blame it on the men . . . lol) the weather forecasters have predicted much cooler weather and even a chance of snow.  Purportedly, the snow will go north.  And we can only hope. 

Bring on the Rain! 



 
 
 
 
 

  

Don't need any more of this . . .