I think the only days it didn’t rain last week were Saturday, Sunday and Monday. It was a much needed break between major rain events. We managed to get the trees trimmed, the lawn mowed and some weeds pulled. We also had our first big harvest.
The garden has been producing a few strawberries and onions, but on Sunday I picked a bunch of green beans. After they were washed, nipped, and blanched, I bagged up 5 batches of green beans to freeze.
It’s a nice family event to all sit around preparing vegetables that we grew. A couple of years ago, we had an amazing harvest of tomatoes. We had so many tomatoes that we made spaghetti sauce, salsa, and pizza sauce that I froze for making meals throughout the year. Preparing all that did take a while so it was nice to have help peeling the tomatoes once they had been blanched.
This weekend, we will be picking both sugar snap peas and sweet peas, along with another batch of green beans. I should have a yellow squash or two ready, as well. The lettuces and spinach are tired of the rain. They need time to dry out. The tops on the carrots are getting tall, but I won’t know for a few more weeks how the rain has effected the roots.
On Monday, Memorial Day, we celebrated my birthday by going to the Japanese gardens in Fort Worth. My daughter had come for the weekend, so it made the day extra special. It was a beautiful walk with so much to see from the beautiful plants and zen garden to the Japanese sculptures and koi fish.
After our walk, we had lunch at a wonderful restaurant called Blue Sushi. My husband, my daughter and I all love sushi so we each ordered something different to share. Everything we ordered was delicious!
Before we headed back home, we stopped by Central Market for some dark chocolate. They have a great selection of so many wonderful foods, and chocolate is no exception. I have become a connoisseur of dark chocolate and prefer it to be at least 70%; when it’s that dark, it has to be good.
Then we went back home to relax and enjoy the nice weather. The afternoon flew by.
For supper we had green beans and new potatoes, wilted Swiss chard with fresh zucchini from the garden, along with some beef short ribs. It really is fabulous eating organically grown food picked fresh right from our garden.
Thanks to all the rain, most of our property has been under water all week. We have had a virtual lake in our hay field for weeks now. The water runs across our entire property onto the neighbors’ properties. It runs as far as you can see in either direction.
It’s hard to complain about the mild temperatures and how lush the lawn is. The garden is doing well and the countryside is pretty and green, but this is our second year for “drought breaking” rain. I am so far behind on my weed pulling (weeds love the rain, too) that I will never get caught up.
On the flip side, I decided to buy some flowers for the flowerbeds. Due to the severe drought we had a few years ago, a lot of my flowers had died. Flowers can be expensive, and I was reluctant to spend the money but so far everything is doing well.
The horses are tired of all the rain and standing water, as well. Their grazing area has been greatly reduced because the water is too deep for them to go through safely. Even though I have some higher ground that the water runs off of fairly quickly, I won’t let them attempt to get to it. I see too many snakes swimming in that water; I can’t take a chance that they might get bitten by a water moccasin.
Plus, they may be willing to wade through 3 feet of water to get to the pasture but to come back to the barn. I certainly do not want to risk having to go get them without a canoe of some kind. At times they get a little cranky and I have to remind them that we are all in this together.
I guess my lessons of late have been about having patience. There are always plenty of things to work on so I just do what I can when I can. I have been working on having a joyful heart through it all. Most of us have made our lives so busy that we could never possibly do it all and still have time for fun things.
I am trying to focus more on family relationships; figuring out how to get the most out of them without expectations. It helps to consider how I want my heart to feel and then doing what increases the joy I have with them in my life.
My thinking is changing a bit, and that extends to the rest of my life, as well. I don’t want to get to the end of my life feeling bitter and used up. I want to feel that I have made a difference in the world, even if it was small. There is a theory called the ‘butterfly effect’ that is based on the premise that even the beating of a butterfly’s wings has an effect on the world. From that prospective, think about how much more the spoken word or even thoughts (because thoughts are energy) affects our world.
Have a great weekend and next week. May you always find the higher ground and stay out of the flood waters.
Psalms 34:19 The righteous person faces many troubles, but the lord comes to the rescue each time.
