The Upside to 3 Weeks of Rain

We had a very wet spring.  I usually complain that we seem to go straight from winter into summer and skip spring all together.  Not this year!  We had about three weeks of rain in June with an occasional glimpse of the sun.  It made the first week the kids were out of school a bit rough because they couldn't go outside to play.  In between rain storms I got out and planted and weeded as much as I could.  It was great to be able to plant flowers and watch them flourish instead of shriveling up.  My berm on the side of the driveway has just exploded with flowers this year.  

Oriental Poppies I transplanted from my parent's yard 

last year.  It is 1o times the size this year!

Blue Flax and Daisies and Desert Four O'clock in the middle.

My other Oriental Poppy, which is more of a salmon color.

My favorite "whiskered" Pansies.

The down side of course is that the weeds are also growing like crazy.  My hay fever hadn't been  troubling me until this week.  There is so much grass pollen right now that I can't work in the yard without being miserable.  I swear I could weed 8 hours a day and still not keep up.  Almost half an acre is a lot to weed.  The yellow clover has come out in force and we have some thistles growing that are almost as tall as me.  I'm going to let Justin deal with those.  We have had fresh spinach and broccoli from Justin's raised beds.  Sadly, the potguts (ground squirrels) ate all but two of our head of broccoli.  Justin shot one of them with his pellet gun while it was munching his broccoli.  He felt entirely justified.  Ruby killed another one that got in our garage, in front of the kids.  They were a little shocked.  After seeing the dead body Barrett said, "Let's spray it with the hose and wake it up."  I tried to explain that that wouldn't work.  Ruby wasn't happy with me when I took it away from her and put it in the garbage can.  Unfortunately, that wasn't to be the last dead rodent I would have to deal with. Stay posted for further details.