The Million-Dollar Rain

At last. I haven't replaced my frost-cracked rain gauge yet, and I haven't found the charger for the camera batteries so I didn't get pictures of the puddles, but all three of my rain barrels overflowed, and that grim look on many faces has been replaced with quiet joy and relief. I heard that many places around here got well over an inch. That was the first significant rain we've had this spring, and coming after a winter with very little snow, and a dry fall before that, it was desperately needed. We had used the rototiller on the garden plot at Brian's, for the potatoes, but in my own garden I was careful not to turn the soil at all; I just knifed the shovel blade down in to lift and loosen where the beds had packed down too much. I could see a little bit of moisture in the deeper soil but the top few inches were hard clods and dust. Hoping still, I put all the early stuff in and right after I finished, it rained softly off and on all weekend. Beautiful. We won't get the eavestrough on the house for a while, but we propped up bits of it to catch some of the drips and filled two of our barrels with wonderfully clean water from that new steel roof.

I took a contract doing assessments of the health of native pasture and wetland areas this summer, so you probably won't be hearing much from me for a while yet.