Saturday, July 04, 2009

Weekend Garden Blogging: Fourth of July

Greetings from Cheyenne, the semi-arid capital of semi-arid Wyoming, which has more water than it knows what to do with.

Just kidding. We never have quite enough. In dry years, we're parched. In wet years, we're refreshing the landscape parched during dry years.

But this year, we get rain every day. Yesterday brought a gully-washer with raindrops big as eyeballs. I heard the rain pounding the porch's aluminum roof and I thought hail had arrived and panicked because I hadn't covered my still-tender plants.

I left my writing desk for the yard and marveled at the afternoon rain. Came down so fast and furious that it smacked down some of my spinach plants. So I picked the leaves for a dinner salad. Added some leaf lettuce. Later, wading through the drenched gardens between plant rows, had a feeling that my semi-arid garden was turning into a rice paddy. Get your Wyoming rice, freshly harvested from Mike's paddy! Weird.

The tomatoes are blooming and heads have formed on all the broccoli. Bush bean plants shooting up to 4-5 inches. Pole beans on the side yard haven't yet sent out shoots to climb the trellis. Picked one ripe strawberry yesterday and shared it with my wife, who gave me grief for teasing her with one tiny little fruit. More to come, my dear. Much more to come.

Bragging to my college son yesterday about my little feat of engineering that keeps the garden irrigated and the patio dry. A drainage field lurks under the garden and rainwater diverted to garden instead of clay soil yard. Used to flood the basement at least once per summer. But no more.

He said he was impressed. Then he went back to reading his book.

As the sun dipped to the horizon yesterday, a huge bank of clouds rose in the West. Rippled with lightning. Uh oh, I said, another deluge for the rice paddies. But the storm missed us and hit Casper and vicinity with a vengeance. You can see some flash flood photos on the Casper Star-Trib web site.

On this Fourth of July, I dedicate my Victory Garden to the visionaries who risked everything to found the U.S.A.

2 comments:

jhwygirl said...

Wow. Weather is crazy down that ways, isn't it? Bozeman had quarter-size hail on Friday, too - meanwhile, it was 90 degrees here in Missoula.

I never knew Wyoming to get that kind of precipitation in the 14 years I lived there..

Anonymous said...

For weekend it is very nice place to spend a time here with our family


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