More Rain

I haven't quite had enough rain, but it's getting there. The ground is squishy, and Darby looks at me mournfully when I make her go outside. She can stay inside when it rains, although she has a dog house, but she has to stay outside when it's just wet, and that hurts her feelings. Is this not a pitiful face? I think she deserves a nice inside nap.


Mama said we had storms last night, but I must have slept right through them. She "put her clothes on" around 3:00, she said, as she has done all her life when the weather gets bad. She wants to take no chance on getting blown into a tree in her pajamas. I stayed up pretty late last night because today is not a get-up-early work day, and I just heard enough rumbling thunder and light rain to make it easy to fall asleep.

Some rainy morning pictures.

The Pyracantha that Ryan espaliered against the fence for me. I think it needs trimming. It had only about 7 berries last winter, so maybe these blooms mean more berries.

I always like a surprise. I'm not sure what I had planted in this pot last years, probably petunias, last summer but not strawberries - that was the year before. This one looks healthy though and is sending out runners. I may have enough berries for a bowl of cereal soon.

This clematis had just 2 leaves last month, but it's taken off and is very enthusiastic. These are all buds, and the flowers will be outstanding.

Lori, my blogging friend from SD, mentioned having to have her coffee perked on the stove. I had actually forgotten that. Even with that shiny GE percolator, we must have liked the coffee made on the stove too, because I can remember 2 pots we had, 1 plain aluminum and the other green enamel. The green one is very clear in my memory because that's the one we used to perk coffee on the grill after the hurricane that reached up into Alabama in the 70s. We lived in Geneva then. Someone will probably correct me, but it must have been Eloise in 1975 - just from Googling it. That's the only hurricane we've ever experienced, and I don't want to do it again. As much as I like wind and rain, that was too much for even me. Gray, Elise, and I cowered in the hallway while Mike paced and looked out windows and, along with a neighbor, watched the progress of a huge pine tree that was threatening to fall on our house. Afterwards, with no power for 9 days, we cooked (and perked delicious coffee) on the grill, along with everyone else in the neighborhood. The smells were wonderful, coffee and food mixed with the turpentine smell of all the fallen pine trees. Chain saws were busy, and neighbors milled around and visited for a few days. After the first few days without power and water and with a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old, it stopped being fun though. I think I depended on Sesame Street every afternoon to give me a break.

I couldn't find a picture of that old coffee pot. Maybe Lori will send me a picture of hers. We did have this one, though, for years.

Speaking of ceramic rabbits earlier this week, I don't want to neglect my favorite bunny from the 1980s.


I believe I may have made this one, although if a daughter wants to claim it, they can. I think I was whiling away the time at a pottery-painting Girl Scout meeting in the early 80s. I'm almost sure Emily didn't do it because I saw the other thing she did that day, and this is not a 5-year-old's bunny. This was not my troop at the time, although it later was. I know this because I would never have had the imagination to take them to a pottery place to do Easter eggs. The eggs they painted were the kind never seen in nature. I think even the Easter bunny would have cringed, but they thought they were so beautiful at the time. They may have been beautiful in 1983 - look at the clothes we wore and thought looked good. The eggs were roughly the size of a football and were covered with flowers and swirls and bows. The ones I have hidden away in the attic lovingly preserved were mainly a pearlescent pink and yellow with a little blue and yellow mixed in. They opened in the middle, and we did display them for a few years until one year, they just didn't come out, and no one missed them.

I think despite the gloomy weather today, I'm going to be forced to get out today. I'm down to eating dry cereal, and Mama needs purple buttons.