Hiding From the Heat

Chapter  2


I haven't been gardening lately.  I've been hiding from the heat.  Oh, I know, I know, this was the year I completed my Master Gardener certificate and I had plans to make this year's garden the best garden ever - but Mother Nature had other ideas.

It's been raining, finally, here at Cheesecake Farms, these past 4 or 5 days or so.  We haven't had much rain all summer - only this awful, humid heat.  But the rain these past few days has magically invigorated me as it did my thirst, dried out plants.  Even the weeds were starting to show signs of heat exhaustion.

But now things are different.  We have RAIN!

The first few hours of rain caused steam to rise from the ground as the cooling drops fell on the despirate ground but after a few days,  the soaking has begun as I'm eager to get out to the garden and begin again.

The guests we've had at our B&B this summer never mentioned our ugly gardens but I felt like we had cheated them out of the visual treat we try to maintain for guests.  Watering the parched patches didn't help.  The ground was just too hot and tender thirst roots just shriveled up.

It's been raining on and off for a week now with the rain nicely staggering itself so we didn't have any run off or erosion to deal with.  Everytime it rains, our horses run out into the fields as if to say, "Here, wash all this dirt and dust off of me!"  

But now fall is approaching.  I'm getting ready to plant the cold crops!  Beets, greens, chard, lettuce and more.  And I'll be putting up a green house using an old tent frame as the structure.  More about that soon.