I just re-read my last post and found that I was complaining about low soil moisture. You won't find anyone on the prairies feeling that way any more. I don't think we've had a full two days of sunshine in a row since then. Many fields remain unplanted - and are very likely to stay that way because it's too late in the season for many crop varieties now, even if it were to dry up tomorrow ... which the weatherman has already told us isn't going to happen. Between watching the oil disaster in the Gulf on the news, and then listening to the depressing forecast on the weather, a person just wants to fling the TV out the window. At least the Blackhawks (the ultimate underdogs) gave us something to cheer about last night. No matter how you feel about them as a team, ending a 41 year drought has to be cause for some kind of celebration.
I did get my garden planted in the middle of May, and aside from the potatoes being very slow coming up, it looks like 100% germination. If I can ever get in there to weed, I'm going to have a fantastic yield. At the moment it is way too wet to think about anything but walking along the edge and looking in. To step in would mean to sink in to my ankles. I'm afraid that the roots will soon start rotting from lack of oxygen too. What a mess!
I also would like to mow lawn, but with every rain more of the yard slips beneath the waves. Last night (when it actually wasn't raining for a change!) I went out to mow around my rock garden, but the minute I got down the hill the mower started to labour and while I stopped to try to see what was wrong with it, my shoes filled up with water. The grass is so long now that I couldn't even see I was out in two inches of water. It killed my mower's motor, and I needed rubber boots to continue. Needless to say, I did the top of the hill and quit. It's not like everyone's lawn doesn't look the same, anyway!
Glen has had very few days of work - again, because of the rain. His part in the establishment of an oil well is to come in before anyone else and prepare a perfectly flat work space for the rig and equipment needed to do the drilling - and build a berm to contain anything that might go wrong. The earth has to be the right consistency for this operation, and mud just doesn't cut it. When we think of all the rules and regulations that have to be adhered to for the drilling of a well on land, it's really hard to wrap your head around how lax things seem to be in deep sea drilling where such harm can come to so many things, and the fix - if they even have one - is almost impossible to implement. How dare the companies like BP and the government regulators charged with watching over them be so callous with wildlife, people's livelihoods, and people's lives, not to mention the Gulf of Mexico itself. They keep talking as if there is enough money to clean it all up. There is not enough money in the world to undo the damage that has been done. And the oil hasn't been stopped yet, either.
Well, enough of my rant - that's what bad weather can do to a person. If I could only be out on my lawn mower, making my yard pretty, you would have been saved from that.
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