Not A Drop

We didn’t get a drop of rain out of all those storms yesterday. Not one drop.  Even in the second round that came through after I'd gone to bed, it was all wind, and a little thunder, but no rain.  I've got lots of small twigs and things down, and my potted plants on the back porch got tumped over, but still...not a drop of rain out of all of that. 

Well, at least the electricity didn’t go out, though it flashed quite a bit, so that’s a good thing.  I'd gotten my new emergency radio/light/power bank thing out just in case, but didn't need it in the end.  

Quite a few people around the state and in Memphis did lose power, so I feel fortunate in that.  Still, we desperately need rain.  I checked my Raindrop app, and according to them, we've only gotten .08" this month.  

With that in mind, one thing I did this morning was to raise my water bottle drippers up a bit.  

I'd heard to put them deep into the soil to encourage the plant's roots to grown downward, but I think I'd gotten them too deep.    My smaller tomatoes were struggling a bit, so hopefully this will help.  They are still a good 4 or 5" into the ground, so we'll see.  

While I was out there, I dug around under the mulch in my pepper bed and pulled out all of the garden staples I'd used to hold the cardboard in place.  At least, I think I got them all.  As I suspected, they are all covered in rust.  I'm going to try the baking soda trick to see if I can get it off, but even if that doesn't work, I've got plenty more.  

The last thing I did was to move all these chunks of concrete up beside the shed to be ready for the cleanup man. 

The previous owners had a huge fire pit out behind the fence.  I'm sure it must have been nice at one time, but somewhere along the way, they started burning garbage in it.  A few years ago, I decided I was tired of mowing around it, so I started cleaning it out.  It was full of junk like broken glass, coke cans, and miscellaneous trash. 

I cleaned all of that out, and stacked the concrete pieces beside the fence to be dealt with later.  Today was later.  It only took a few trips with my wheelbarrow to get it all moved, and I was done in time to take a shower before church. 

In doing all of that digging around these last few days, I found this gem. 

Figuratively speaking of course.  It's just a rock.  A good sized rock -- twelvish inches or so.  I think I might find a place for it in my toad garden.  

Oh, and I should probably mentioned that I finally finished my Hillsdale College course on American paintings. It should have been such a fascinating course, but ...I don't like throwing shade, but the lectures were delivered in such a dry, monotonous voice that they were hard to sit through.  I often joked that if they'd edited out all of them ums and uhs, the lessons would have only been half the length.  

Anyway, I finished and signed up for another course, this time on C.S. Lewis And Christianity.  I haven't started it yes, but I will soon. 

Hopefully, it'll be more interesting than the last one.