Ahhh, listen to that rain....

It quit raining for a while yesterday, and it wasn't raining this morning when I got up.  I poured a cup of coffee and took it for a stroll around the yard, to see what the news was gwanna be, as Brer Fox once said.  ;)

The grandkid bed is up.  I pulled back the screen wire and found lettuce, sprouting, but still a bit sparse.  Beets, thicker than cathair in places.  (I ruthlessly pulled up some of the beets to give the others some elbow room.)  Moderate sprouting of kale and spinach.  Some of the bare root hosta is looking good, starting to straighten up and soak up some green.  The ferns haven't sent up fronds, yet.  I hope this doesn't mean they're dead.  The area where I strewed cornflower and larkspur seeds has little stuff coming up all over the place, but it's too little to tell what it is, could be weeds.  Or phlox that survived the burning.

After the walk-about, I went to town and bought dirt and plants and groceries.  The nicest thing happened when I was buying the dirt - five big bags - at the local dollar store.  I'd parked the truck near the stacks of dirt in the store parking lot.  In the store, I grabbed a cart and got some things we needed for the house, then when I got to the cash register, I paid for that stuff, completely forgetting that I wanted dirt.  But I remembered it about the time I zipped my card, and I asked the cashier to ring up five bags of dirt for me.  I figured this would irk the people in line behind me, and I apologized to them for holding them up.  And when I looked at the faces in line, the one directly behind me was Mr. Pete, a guy who lives up the road from us.  I said, "Hey, Mr. Pete," and paid for my dirt.  While I was punching buttons, the cashier asked me if I needed help getting the dirt.  I said, "Nah, I got it."  She just kept on about how heavy it was, etc., and I kept declining the whole time I was walking out the door.  I got in the truck and backed it a little closer to the dirt, and when I got out of the truck, there was Mr. Pete, insisting on helping me load the dirt.  I told him I'd make The Husband unload it.  He said, "'ere ya go."

After I put up my groceries, I put on my gloves and went outside.  Filled up the big concrete basket on the porch with lavender viola and dusty miller.  Dragged a cement planter out of the bushes and put the same viola and dusty miller in it, and set it by the new fountain.  Dumped the rest of the bag of garden soil in the bucket of an old rusty wheelbarrow, and used up the rest of the viola and dusty miller, and stuck some snapdragons in with it.  Maybe all that stuff in planters will survive for as long as Mother Nature keeps it watered.

I put together one more 4 x 4 raised bed frame, and put dirt in it, and planted brussels sprouts and lettuce in it.  Way more than we need.  The Husband said, "Oh, goody...brussels sprouts."*  I hope every one of the plants lives and makes a giant stalk of sprouts, and we have so many sprouts I'll have to freeze them so that I can cook them at least once a week, all year long.

About the time I got the last lettuce plant in the ground, it started to rain again.  The Husband and the Elder Son were putting up a CB antenna.  No shit.  They were toting this giant metal pole, and this long, whip-like antenna, and were looking for a place to drive the big pole into the ground and secure it to the house with clamps.  They were just all up in the beds around the house, going, ,"Naw, nope...."  Evidently, they did not find an adequate spot, for the next thing I knew, they'd dropped the big metal pole in the yard and were lashing the antenna to the frame of the swing out in the yard.  They ran a cord across the yard (on the ground) to the back porch, where my husband has set up his "base station."  He's out there on the back porch now, listening to it squawk.

Did you know they say the "f-word" on CB radios these days?