Rain, rain, go away.

Rain, rain, rain. That is all this Summer has been. July 4th began three days of intermittent downpours that brought a seasons worth of rain all at once. Floods everywhere.



On the plus side, I have been doing allot of dancing in the rain. The air has been quite warm, but doesn't reach above 70 degrees often.  Our back garden is a swampy jungle, but this has not been a good year for the garden I had started.  The strawberry plants are huge and trying to produce strawberries,but they rot before they turn red.  The peas were successful, but then the snails got to the pods before we did.  Our corn is tiny and the leaves are shredded.  We have two corn plants growing inside to see if we can get something.  I am still waiting on the success of a cauliflower plant and some slow growing onions.

My sunflowers, on the other hand, are blooming and are at least 5 feet tall.  Our fushia bushes, which were tiny last year, are huge and bushy, and the roses are finally full of blossoms.



But let's talk about snails.  I am amazed at the quantity and size of this years snails.  Today I found a snail whose home was 1 inch in length. and about that in height.  I do not come from a place where snails are common place.  I am used to huge slugs in mass quantities, snails are almost a welcomed guest.  My mom is an amazing slug hunter.  I have this vision of her in her garden impaling slugs without a second thought.   Last year, after dark, I would go snail hunting.  I would smash any snail of a small to medium size and throw large snails over the fence into the road.  I felt awful.  So this year I put out poison.  The only problem is that you are left with hundreds of snail shells all over the garden and then I still feel awful.  The recent rain has made it difficult to keep the poison around, so the Sprout and I routinely scour the garden collecting snails and throwing them over the fence.

This Summer has been a total bummer in terms of weather.  It is a good thing that so many cool things (the Jubilee, Wimbledon, and the Olympics) are happening to detour us from the weather.