Like Salt, It Never Stops Pouring

We are given no opportunity to dry out. We're completely sodden again. Calamitous. Not for us, but for area farmers. The soft-fruit crops were dreadfully impacted; too much rain, not enough sun created tasteless berries. And other crops are suffering as well; area farmers opine that they're at least two weeks behind where they should be in their growing period, and that isn't taking into account the seeds that drowned, that never managed to germinate at all. For house-holders who love to garden the danger is that they may lose annuals to root rot.

For agriculturalists and consumers of agricultural produce, which is all of us, this uneven weather pattern plaguing us at present can be catastrophic. For amateur gardeners it is a nuisance, nothing more. My neighbour claims to have lost some of her tomato plants to rot; mine are flourishing. On the other hand, some of my many large garden pots are not doing as well as they should. Where some of the potted plants are managing themselves quite nicely, others less so, even of the same types, like begonias, for example - show-offs in one pot, not so in another.

The constant rain and the continuous humidity has resulted in a bonus for us, however. We've got lovely mosses and even tiny, fragile plants that have bright pink flowers, smaller even than 'pinks' growing in the minute cracks between our brick pavers, and they're lovely. I have a plant that I just admire tremendously, a chameleon plant that has grown over the years and become a real mainstay in one of our garden beds. A few days ago I bought two large pots of the plants, and yesterday carefully took them apart.

I planted them in groups and singly here and there, all over our various garden beds and borders. And still had enough left over to give five or six of the plants as a gift to a neighbour for her gardens. Oddly enough, I had attempted, unsuccessfully, over the years to take rooted bits of this plant and transplant them, and never succeeded. The same thing has happened with the Japanese anemone; I've realized no success with it, as well.

With the chameleon plant, and its lovely tiny white flowers now distributed in many of the garden beds I look forward to seeing more of them. The bonus here, with this weather is that I haven't had to water all the plants I've been transplanting; nature has been doing that for me. The same neighbour who accepted the chameleon plants has fallen in love with our California poppies and I've promised to give her the seed heads when they mature.

When I was taking a break, sitting on the deck in the back with little Riley beside me on the glider, I decided to have a look at the newly-planted stock, going around to the front, forgetting to return, transported with a kind of rapture, viewing the splendid look of the gardens. I had assumed that Riley would stay put, where, after all, my husband was working under the deck, filling it in with cement pavers, to keep it neat and clean and as free of weeds as possible. Curious Riley eluded our expectations and turned up in the front, in time for a photo session.

Later, ensconced once again on the glider, reading the newspaper with Riley asleep beside me, my husband deep in the interior under the deck to complete his work, we heard light little 'pings' on the canopy of the gazebo. The pings became more insistent, louder, and impossible to ignore. The sky had suddenly transpired from clear to cloudy, and unleashed upon us yet another sneaky rain event. I stayed high and dry on the deck and so did my husband, under the deck, as the rain picked up steam and thundered atop the gazebo.

Bliss.