The Mother of All Rain Gauges

Farmer B isn't what I'd call an overly-romantic guy, so when he does do something especially romantic, it really means a lot to me. The other day when a mystery package arrived at the front door and Farmer B said "Surprise!" and opened up the Mother of All Rain Gauges, I remembered why I married him.

I am now the proud owner of a Rainwise Wireless Dual Counter Digital Rain Gauge that is proudly mounted above the well in our back yard. It has an 8-inch diameter bucket to collect the rain and every time it tips, a count is transmitted to the indoor display and the gauge empties. Each tip shows one hundredth of an inch on the indoor display and you never have to empty the gauge. Suh-weet!


I'm excited about this rain gauge for two reasons:

1) We've had record-breaking rains both times I've planted the garden and we've always wondered exactly how much rain fell at our house. Sure the weather guys tell us how many inches fell in our area, but I'll admit to being curious as to exactly how much fell at our house so that I can brag about it to our friends. This is one of the many reasons I realize what a complete and total nerd I can be at times. Don't worry - I haven't signed up to be a weather watcher for our local news station.

2) Buying this fancy rain gauge guarantees that we'll never have record-breaking rainfall at our house again. This purchase means that no one in our neighborhood will ever be flooded again. Sadly they won't know why, but I'll know that our new highfalutin rain gauge was the reason. It's like going on a vacation to a gorgeous sunny beach and buying expensive sunglasses halfway into your trip - it's a given the sun will stay behind the clouds for the rest of the vacation. It's the Murphy's Law of my life.


This rain gauge meets National Weather Service specifications for statistical accuracy so I'll be all geeked up the next time it rains. As you can see from the photograph, it hasn't rained since we installed the thing 3 days ago since it's still registering at zero. The wireless display works up to 300 feet away so right now it's sitting in the kitchen behind my laptop. Farmer B is itching to install it on the wall so it doesn't get broken by the boys, but I think it's too unattractive to be screwed into the wall, so we'll see who wins this battle.


Maybe I'll lose the two mounting screws... that's guaranteed to throw a kink in his plan...

Garden Blogger's Death Day

Anyone that's been around the garden blog circuit for awhile knows about Carol from May Dreams Garden. She's been voted as one of the most influential garden bloggers and she has a popular monthly post called Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. On the 15th of every month gardeners from around the country can post a comment saying what's blooming in their gardens. It's a great way to see what's growing in other gardens around the country and connect with other garden bloggers.

Then there's Carolyn at Sweet Home and Garden Chicago who hosts Garden Blogger's Muse Day on the 1st of every month. It's a nice way to bring in the month with a poem and a photograph of something inspiring. You'd think as the current U.S. LAPCPADPOUB title-holder, I'd be able to wipe the floor clean with deliciously dire cat poems, but as of now I merely enjoy reading what others write.

But where's the day for gardeners who overwater, underwater, maim, prune or otherwise neglect their plants to a state of dismal droopage or untimely death? There isn't one, my friends…until now.

Introducing my own personal meme: Garden Blogger's Death Day. I've had two planting seasons in my vegetable gardening life and I've had widespread death and destruction both times. I know there has to be some other gardeners out there like me with black thumbs who kill more than they cultivate, or even green-thumbed gardeners who have a lapse in judgment and commit accidental planticide.


Did you accidentally leave the sprinklers on for 13 hours and flood the garden? (check). Did you have an infestation of hornworms and now have leafless sticks instead of tomato plants? (check). Did a freak rainstorm flood your garden and wash away your plants? (check). Did you overheat your seedlings and singe them all to a crisp? (check). Are you so bad at remembering to water your plants that you bought some Aqua Globes from that infomercial and then you forgot to fill them with water and killed the plants anyway? (check). Well here is your support group, baby.

I have decided to host Garden Bloggers Death Day today. I'm so incredibly disappointed that I was actually "getting" this whole gardening gig a little bit this time and then most of it washed away and became a yellow, mushy lump of rotten slush after 14 inches of relentless rain. Here are some pictures of what my garden looked like after the rain - it has since sat in this state for over a week and it's more yellowed and rotten now than when these photos were taken a couple of days ago. It has now been pruned and a bunch of the dead plants have become one with the compost heap.






If you too have had an untimely plant death, feel free to post it in my comments section. Maybe I'll feel like less of a big fat gardening loser if I discover I'm not the only one who can't catch a break from Mother Nature or Mutha Shut Yo Mouth, as she's being called around here lately. Hmph. Maybe we can even support each other like a good pair of pantyhose or a well-staked garden trellis.

Survivors

I went out into the garden yesterday to see how bad the damage was and rescue any survivors. I'm afraid my mission went from a rescue mission to a recovery mission pretty quickly. Almost everything is dead and some of the plants have just washed away. What's still in one piece is droopy, yellow and wet. It's a pretty sad state of affairs to be honest.

According to the local weather, our area got close to 14 inches of rain and overall the state of Florida got more rain than it did during Tropical Storm Faye - I think around 27 inches. It's also more rain than the state has ever received from a non-tropical system. So we set records left and right. The initial damage estimates are at $100 million dollars for the state. So I guess my flooded yard and ruined garden don't matter in the grand scheme of life, although in my little world it just plain sucks.

But on to the survivors. A couple of the younger tomato plants look like they might recover, but the established plants look like their time is numbered. I plucked any tomatoes that looked like they had a hint of red on them and left the green ones for another day. This is the stash that I recovered and placed on the patio to ripen.


It looks good until you have a closer look and realize most of them have completely split open and are inedible.


Why aren't the birds eating these tomatoes? Maybe their tiny little bird bellies are full from all the good tomatoes they snarfed down before the rains came.

There was one lone green bell pepper clinging to a soggy plant so I plucked it off and brought it inside. The other bell pepper plant is missing so I'm guessing it washed away.


My leeks that I've had a loving relationship with since October of last year are starting to droop, so I got nervous when I saw them. I pulled two of them out to see how they looked because I'm worried they all need to come out of my soil-soup. I yanked two of them out and they seem okay, but they were only the size of thick scallions.


I won't go into the list of what's dead in the post because this is all about the survivors. I won't talk about the dead pumpkins, beans, peas, cucumber, zucchini, cantaloupe or okra. I'll keep this post about my sick little harvest of survivors and show the death and destruction for a later post.

I'm not enjoying "it" right now

Yeah, you read it right. I'm not enjoying it. And by "it" I mean the garden and the chickens. All of this rain has meant taking care of both has turned into a chore that I dread each day. Funny how I enjoyed both last week and this week I'm ready to kick everything in the back yard to the curb.


The back yard is flooded. I think we've had over 10 inches of rain in one week. Granted some areas just north of here have had 24 inches in one week and there are roads and schools closed. But 10 inches of rain means the entire back yard is flooded with some areas having about 6 inches of standing water, our pool overflowed and our septic is making us nervous with bubbly digestive gurgles in the back yard.


We can't go out back without the dog getting soaked, the boys getting soaked from head to toe, requiring a full change of clothes when we get in, and me getting soaked from overly-enthusiastic splashing boys. The novelty of this for me wore off after the first day. We're on day 5 now. The novelty of this has not worn off for the boys or the dog.

When you wade over to the chickens you discover that this much rain turns their coop into a stinky-soupy-poopy-cesspool. I had to go to the feed store to buy another bale of hay because their tarp-covered bale of hay is now floating in our wheelbarrow. Their coop has hardwire sides to keep them cool in the oppressive Florida heat, but this ingenious solution means the rain gets in too. I spent close to 2 hours yesterday scraping out gobs of floating hay and poo, digging out clumps of wet chicken food from their feeder and scooping out bucketfuls of heavy, wet shavings from their transportation box (more on this later). Keep in mind I'm doing this while it's pouring with rain and I'm standing in about 4 inches of water. I finally left the coop dry and clean and was thoroughly exhausted when I was finished, but glad I wouldn't have to do anything like that again for a long time.

Last night I got smart and threw a huge tarp over the coop, but left one little part open so the chickens didn't get overheated while they slept. I knew they'd enjoy their first night in a dry coop all week. After hours of procrastination, I waded out there late this morning to discover that the little part I'd left open for them to get fresh air was just enough to make the coop look exactly like it did the day before. Exactly like it did the day before. Exactly. I can't begin to tell you the level of dismay I felt when I saw that. It took a lot of willpower not to grab the chickens and chuck them over the fence into our neighbors yard to mingle with their flock.

Then I waded over to the garden to see how it was holding up. The okra seedlings look quite pretty reflecting so perfectly in the puddle of water that has formed around them. The peas look like they're working on their suicide note and will soon be compost-bound. And you already read about my #&%@! cracked tomatoes. I don't even want to get in there and pull any weeds because my boot squelches down several inches when I step onto our nutrient-free soil, so I think it's best I stay out and watch it drown from a distance.


Before you think I'm really ready to throw in the towel, please know that I've read enough Hallmark cards and listened to enough Country music to know that things always get better after the rain, that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger, that if you can get though this, you can get through anything, that the sun will come out tomorrow... and that no matter what I'll still have the dog and the truck at the end of the day.

Tommorow is D-Day, or is it?

We had a nice little surprise in the mail this week. Our seeds arrived from Seed Savers Exchange. I'm quite intrigued with the little packets of seeds, but can't imagine we'll ever get them to grow into real live veggie-producing plants. The seeds came really quickly, much to our surprise, and arrived with a little card saying that Seed Savers Exchange is a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving more than 25,000 endangered vegetable varieties. Fancy huh? So now I have the added pressure of making sure these little packets of seeds grow so I don't disappoint the Exchange - I know they won't know...but I have serious guilt issues. Seed guilt. I'll add it to the list.
The boys and I went to Lowe's and Home Depot this morning to buy our seedlings. When I see the cost of seedlings, I see why it pays to start from seeds. But our plan was to do half seeds and half seedlings our first year, which is much less intimidating than an entire garden of seeds. We brought the seedlings home and loaded them into the boys' little red wagon. As we're loading them it started to rain. I panicked and quickly pulled the wagon into the garage so the plants wouldn't get wet. Yeah, I really did that. Then I realized that the seedlings actually need rain, so I ran into the garage and pulled the wagon out... as the rain stopped. I'm a natural, don't you think?
Tomorrow was supposed to be the big planting day. August 1st - our gardening D-Day - the first day of the Fall planting season. But there has been a snafu. We've got the seeds, the seedlings, the garden has been tilled, hoed and left to sit ready for planting. But the rain. Oh the rain. Oh the never-ending rain. If you don't live in FL you don't know that much of FL was once a swamp and the developers came in and built subdivisions on the swamps. So when it rains, our yard returns back to its prehistoric swampy state. Aidan is just shy of 50 lbs and when he stood in the garden today his boot was surrounded by a little pool of water. It makes a fun squishing sound when you walk and it moves like a pit of quicksand. But something tells me that this swampy wet garden isn't the optimal medium for planting seeds and seedlings. Although I can find nothing online that says you can't plant in this - I have a gut feeling that it won't be a good thing. So now what? Do we wait for the rains to stop? That's another month at least. And then we're in the meat of hurricane season. What do we do with this wagon full o' seedlings? I think Farmer B and I need to have a gardening conference tonight and figure out what to do next. This is not in the gardening book.

The Deluge

Rain
I opened my eyes
And looked up at the rain,
And it dripped in my head
And flowed into my brain,
And all that I hear as I lie in my bed
Is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head.

I step very softly,
I walk very slow,
I can't do a handstand--
I might overflow,
So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said--
I'm just not the same since there's rain in my head.

~Shel Silverstein

You all may be aware of the four seasons that grace this beautiful country - I've seen pictures of them. They looks so nice. But until you've lived in Florida you will never understand the "real" seasons. We have two seasons here: Hurricane season (6 months of the year) and Tourist season (the other 6 months of the year). These seasons are also known as the hot-as-hell season and the rainy season. Right now we're deep in the glory that is hurricane season, where life is centered around the local meteor- ological yahoos on the news blathering on about low pressure systems and possible circulation and then donning rain slickers and hanging onto palm trees as tropical systems come ashore. So the reason for all this rain we're experiencing now? This never-ending rain? This rain that is flooding our yards and our roads and our ditches? A low pressure system swirling around in the Gulf of Mexico that could turn tropical and is "worth watching" as they like to say. Goooood times. Our garden is a muddy pit of despair and our yard is perfect for skimboarding. The dog is obsessed with drinking muddy water. The boys are continually soaked. And this isn't even a storm worth naming. Welcome to sunny Florida. Pass the umbrella.