Late April

April is so unpredictable.  People went crazy planting their gardens as fast as they could in early and mid April during those lovely, dry, warm spells.  However, it’s been raining pretty much constantly since my last post, 8 days ago, and it is currently only 48 degrees Fahrenheit.  I’m certain there will be lots of potatoes and onions rotted in the ground, and a lot of seeds needing to be replanted.

The jury is still out on the portions of my garden that have already been planted.  The sugar snap peas seem to be doing okay.  They’re up a couple of inches.  The Walla Walla onions are iffy.  They’re in a wetter part of the garden, and had barely gotten past their initial planting shock when the rains hit.  I had also gotten some beet, chard, kale, and spinach seeds in the ground right before the rains hit.  It could be a while before I know if I’ll have to replant them.

In the meantime, the asparagus has really gone bonkers.  Here’s my haul from Sunday, along with the lone morel that I found along the driveway.

I think we’ve averaged about an inch a day for the last 8 days at Peace Acres.  The pond has been up as high as it gets, with water rushing in one end and out the other at about an equal pace.  It only gets higher very briefly if the pace of the rain is really intense for a short period of time.

I took the girls out for a romp in the rain after work on Monday, just for some comic relief.  Though Rosie still hasn’t figure out that she can swim, she LOVES the water. 

I keep thinking that one of these days I’m going to have to bite the bullet and get into the pond and teach Rosie that she can swim if she gets in the deeper water.  I haven’t been in the pond for a very long time.  It has a soft, muddy bottom, and that mud stinks when you stir it up.  YUCK!  But when we were kids we got into the pond quite a bit, especially when we first moved in. 

I believe it was the first summer that we moved here when I nearly drowned in the pond for fear of the mucky bottom, not far from where Rose is in the picture above.  I had been swimming along, sort of treading water so I wouldn’t have to touch the bottom, and I suddenly felt that I was too far from the shore, and was losing my ability to stay afloat.  I started burbling, “Help!  Help!” as loudly as I could, but my voice seemed so small and not able to carry, as I was barely able to keep my mouth above the water.  I was completely panicked.

Then I heard a voice very near me yell, “Stand up!”  I turned around as best I could while drowning, and found my face very near the legs of my brother, Dan, who was STANDING right next to me, looking down at me with equal parts humor and disdain.  The water was only about 2 ½ feet deep. And so I stood.  Touching the muddy bottom was preferable to drowning in 2 ½ feet of water! I hadn’t been aware of how shallow most of the pond was because I had refused to touch bottom except right at the shore.  Dan continued to tease me about that right on into adulthood.

Sometimes, you just have to decide to forget about the muck and have a good time.  At certain times of the year, the pond will grow huge forests of algae, or "moss",  that wind up floating all over the surface of the pond.  We have some excellent pictures of Brenda and her friend Holly Gregory splotched with the slimy “moss” that they had been wading into and slinging at one another.  I wonder if they would dare to do that now.  I wonder if I could even swim in the pond.  I might need to borrow some waders to see if I can teach Rosie to swim without having to touch the muck directly.  Or can I behave like a child again, disregard the muck, and have a good time?