Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head

Miraculous! We have had rain and cool temps for three, count them, three days in a row. It has drizzled, thundered, lightninged, and/or downpoured on top of the monsoon rains that we received last week. After the hot, miserably dry spring and summer we've had, this is fantastic! No more dust, shriveled and burned vegetation, not to mention dehydrated skin and hair. The world looks washed, and sparkley. No more red flag fire warning days with smoke hazing the sky. And even though the prairie never greened up in the spring, we now see a shade of green spreading over the hills and gullies; and when the 90 degree temps return later in the week, I am sure the green prairie grass will leap out of the moist earth.


The prairie grasses and flowers have adapted to our hot, dry climate by going into "hibernation"
(actually, animals hibernate and plants do something else, but I can't come up with the proper word at this particular time) during our periodic droughts, ready to spring back into life when the moisture finally returns. The average moisture received here is 12 inches a year, so you can imagine how dry it gets during a drought year. Prairie species have to be tough!


My garden is refreshed and so am I. I even went out during one of the brief dry spells in the early afternoon, fed the birds, and pulled some gigantic weeds that were trying to take over the herb garden, until Joe shooed me back indoors before I could wear myself out. Noone can pull just one! Those deep roots pull out of the moist soil so easily and satisfactorilly (I'm not sure that's really a word, but I tend to like speaking colloquially, even if I have to invent the colloquialisms.)

We are enjoying the vegetables from our garden, they taste good as well as looking good. I chopped up zuchinni, eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, garlic from the garden with purchased onion, and made my version of Ratatouille; grated cucumbers into herb flavored yoghurt; and sprinkled celery salt onto juicy sliced tomatoes for meals this weak. Home grown tomatoes actually taste like tomatoes and, as Joe puts it, they don't crunch when you bite them, like what they sell as tomatoes at the grocery stores.



I actually started sewing the new retro curtains for our vintage camper/trailer this evening and found some light and dark turquoise towel sets, while shopping this afternoon, that go with the curtain fabric perfectly. When I sat down at the sewing machine, I was even able to remember how to use the poor neglected thing.


I'm also contemplating making a quilt for my bed using the bundle of Moda's Prairie Paisley fabrics that I purchased from Grandma's Attic Quilting. Since I love both paisley (Persian Pickles) and the prairie, I was intrigued from the time I read that they were coming out with the Prairie Paisley patterns and was overjoyed, when I saw the photos of the fabrics, to find that they were in the shades of blue that I adore. I am very fond of the blue English country floral comforter I've had for ages, but it is beginning to show signs of use by me and my cats. I'm afraid that one more trip to the laundry will shred it.