We did a little spending at the garden centre on the weekend and worked on making the outside of the house look pretty. What is it with dandelions? Do they hate us that much? By the time we dug them all out of the back yard it looked like a heard of elephants trampled what little grass was left. On the plus side, my perennials look much nicer without all the dead leaves from last fall around them. I still have to plant the annuals but the risk of frost is still real here until May long weekend, so I'm not worried about that just yet.
Speaking of annuals... I usually do some container gardening on our back deck. A few tomatoes, some herbs, maybe some radishes and a hot pepper plant. I wasn't going to bother this year, just sticking to flowers and herbs that would be easier to care for and still provide a little colour. Then we saw Bhut Jolokia peppers (aka ghost peppers, one of the hottest peppers out there, 400 times hotter than Tabasco according to wikipedia). Usually I can't find anything more exotic than cayenne or hot banana peppers (which is fine, I don't mean to complain) so I don't know that I'll ever see Jolokia seedlings again which made it worth the purchase. We'll see how that goes, my backyard isn't exactly the same as it's natural home climate of Northern India and I'm not one for babying plants (hence the purchase of seedlings, not seeds).
This is the first week it's finally been warm enough to not wear socks. At long last, my open toed shoes can be worn again. Sadly with the warmer weather seems to come rain (mostly scattered showers/thunder storm, not all day depressing rain) and the temperatures are dropping slightly just in time for the upcoming long weekend (Victoria Day). Figures. We camp every year, in the rain and occasionally the snow. Temperatures of 15C during the day and 5C at night aren't so bad if it stays dry. If.
I really should make a water proof jacket one of these days.
I also think I should send my parents to the Northwest Territories for Mother's Day next year. I swear this was the most sane Mother's Day I've ever had. No tears, no stress, I was very relaxed about it all. I didn't forget about it but I didn't really think about it. I did buy my traditional gift of a fuchsia hanging basket and hung it up at her house so she'd come home to it when I picked my parents up from the airport. Really, we might be on to something here.
We've had buckets of rain here as well. It's actually kind of cool to see the thunderstorms from the 8th floor windows of the lab, but I hate to be the undergrads that have to walk around out in it!
ReplyDeleteI love watching storms come in. In my 4th year of university I went to St Kitts & Nevis for a field course and a hurricane hit the area while we were there. It ended up missing the island, but it was super cool to see the ocean change and have a fluvial geographer explain how the beach was changing in shape. There is such drama in nature.
DeleteOh man, if you could pack up some of that rain and send it our way, we'd be eternally grateful! I've heard that we are officially in a worse drought than they had during the "dirty 30's", but with our better farming practices it's helped keep it from becoming a full on dust bowl like they had back then. It's been "unseasonably cold" the last few days here, but honestly, I'm not sure what they think the problem is--I'm not missing the mid 80's and muggy-ness at all. ;-) It could stay like this all year as far as I'm concerned. ;-)
ReplyDeleteI would wish you luck on selling your house, but considering that ours hasn't sold yet, I'm clearly not very lucky and may jinx you. But I can relate on the packing/cleaning. We've been putting it off, but the school year ends next week, and then it's ON.
That's a pretty awful drought, particularly for an area reliant on agriculture. I suppose with our spring starting so late, I shouldn't be surprised about May showers... At least the rain generally held off while we were camping, but it was really quite cold on Friday night. The ground was malleable like modeling clay, but not straight up mud.
DeleteSo much of houses is location and it's finding the person who wants to be in your location I'm afraid. Our street seems to be in demand. The only houses that seem to sit are over priced. Hopefully that's the case for us too. Like our attached neighbours didn't even get the for sale sign on the lawn and it was conditionally sold. I think that's only going to happen if the house is displayed well, so more cleaning is needed. Maybe having school out will be a push for other people to move too, thus increasing the people looking. I will keep my fingers crossed for you.