May

May is here!  April had to get one more big shower in before it left us; for four hours yesterday, thunderstorms sat over this little place here and dropped a good half inch of rain on us in that time period. That was added to the nearly three and a half inches we'd gotten in the previous 13 days.  All that rain isn't soaking in very quickly.

So much for my plans to get outside and do some work in the garden yesterday or today; the soil is so waterlogged I don't dare step foot in the garden.  Neither do I dare to do anything that requires the tractor (such as spring cleaning the chicken coop), as the tractor will surely make ruts anywhere I drive it, especially in the garden where the chicken coop shovelings traditionally go this time of year. Getting my early crops: the peas, potatoes, beets, broccoli, spinach planted is a no-go.

Back to the drawing board, or rather, my never-ending to-do list, to see what is possible until the ground dries up somewhat.  Funny, that on a beautiful 80 degree day like today, I find myself working mostly indoors, repotting seedlings, doing a little knitting, making and returning phone calls. . .

One nice thing about yesterday's showers, though:  they did bring May flowers!  I snapped a couple of pictures of things that definitely were not blooming yesterday even after the storm passed.

golden suns of dandelions

forsythia looking like it's dripping sunshine

close-up of a forsythia branch

lilac blooms are developing, 

looking like tiny upside-down clusters of grapes

Since it's such a nice day today, and since there are so many earthworms and bugs out, I decided to let my chickens out of their pen for a few hours.  They are on work-release, if you will: out of jail to do the work of eating bugs (and saving me money on chicken feed!)