Take Flight

This week the theme for the Header Challenge (see far right sideboard) is “Flight” chosen by Dave. 

O’ boy does my spirit need to take flight on the back of a fluttering narcissus; soar into brighter, sunnier states of heart from where it dwells at present, the reality of ankle deep muds and boot cresting lakes of rain. 

Sorry to those of you thinking and expectin’ I would use a photo of birds flying o’er the Farm, until I can upgrade from my little Exilim as my only camera, I won’t be attempting birds in flight. 

Or perhaps you were expectin’ a photo of Dirt doin’ his thing with flyin’ machines.  This blog is named for him, he is after all God’s instrument of sanity in my life (which means of course that I’m God’s instrument of insanity in his, lucky fellow) but he is there (at school, teaching) and I am here and I’s the one writing, photographin’

(when I’m not throwing the camera in the water, yep, I most certainly did, and now it doesn’t work so well – but that’s a story for another day) and livin’ with my horrid grammar – oh wait, that’s your job Dear Reader… any way, in spite of Dirt’s paying occupation in the industry of flight, you know me, I just can’t seem to do the most reasonable of things.

So instead let’s fly away on the sunny petals of an ace of a flower, cuz I sure can’t bloom in this stuff, this soggy weather.

The Endless Water Situation

The pump can’t keep up with the sky and highway ditch.  The ends of the potato beds are flooded again, I’ve now spent far more in gas than the taters are worth at this point, I’m about to loose the edges of the onion beds if it all keeps up. But I’m done trying to rid the Market Garden of excess water via the pump.  It has been retired from de-irrigation and now will head to the shop for a tune up before this summer when it will re-irrigate the same plot it tried so valiantly to drain. 

This morning before our ten o’clock break Bet and I dug the trans-continental ditch, if that doesn’t work, I’m done tryin’.

Here are the numbers that I don’t need to see, I have proof of them in my Market Garden, I hope the IRS is taking note because they won’t be seeing much in my profit column this year either.

Five days into the month and we’ve already received 1.80 inches of our typical 2.59.  I’m thinking the rest of the month isn’t going to be clear nor is the drought just around the corner.

Last month we had almost twice what we should.  March’s average is 3.75 inches, this year we had 6.29 inches.

January and February the precipitation was well below normal but it matters little because we ended out the year with a very wet December and the whole year of 2010 had 9.92 more inches of rain than what is normal.  We were quite soggy and not ready for all the buckets of water we have received in the last six weeks.

Year-to-date accumulative isn’t quite as important on the Farm as the whopping amounts we can get in just a few days, like what we’ve done the last half of March and the first five days of April, especially on top of an already saturated landscape.  Too much all at once and the channels and ponds can’t deal with it all, so gardens flood and seeds and tiny plants either drown or float into the pathways.

Unlike last spring, it hasn’t been a warm rain.  So far the PNW is running 4.2 degrees below the norm for April.

I’m so darned excited that spring is here.  Have I mentioned that before?  Oh and spring cleaning is hanging over my head, I’ve only successfully completed one room, the smallest in the house, the pantry.  But that’s a story for another day.

Not that I care, lawns are Dirt’s thing not mine, but the back lawn is a swamp as I walk down to a small slice of heaven in all this quagmire.

Dear Reader if I could only dare to take a nap.  ‘Cept I fear that if I did lay down mid-day for just a wee nap, I would choose to not lift my head or open my eyes ’til July fifth.  (It always rains on the fourth)  So I avoid the bed entirely once I have spread it up in the morning after my good night’s sleeps.  I don’t return to the room until it is finally night time.

I do not believe I’m on the edge of defeat nor despair, but at this moment it is extremely evident that onlyh my Lord can keep my one foot going steadily in front of the other, and the hands on the shovel, it certainly isn’t upon my own strength.  He has supplied me with a bit of a muti-layered challenge and with a corresponding burning desire and ability to meet the challenge.  My Lord God is my spirit’s Flyer.