blessed rain and other stories

We have finally received some rain...three days of gentle constant soaking in rain.  Of course it came with really cold temperatures, 40s and 50s.  I was standing at the check out at the grocery store in the country Saturday afternoon and the very proper little old lady next in line, in her early 70s I would guess, remarked to me how wonderful the rain was, how badly it was needed.  I agreed with her saying too bad it came with such cold weather.  “I don’t care about that.” she said.  “I would dance naked out in it but I would have to be alone because”, she says to me, “no one wants to see that.”  Cracked me up.

In the garden, spinach and beans are still no shows.  Our neighbor and his wife have run a nursery for 50 some odd years and he came over a couple of weeks ago to make sure we didn’t buy our tomato plants from Walmart (which is the store of last resort for me and unfortunately the only big store in Wharton), because, he says, they are forced and once in the garden, will expire.  He has some really great vintage tomato plants that he grows, collects his own seeds every year.  In fact, his whole garden rocks, so we will get our tomato plants from him this week and get them in.  

Went over to my sister’s yesterday so my granddaughter could collect the eggs.  They also have three ducks and one of the hens keeps fluttering over the fence and into the pen with the ducks.  My sister throws it back over and the next day, it’s back with the ducks.  She has finally given up and lets this particular hen live with the ducks.  I was standing there waiting for Robin to finish trying to catch one of the ducks and the hen was right next to the fence, waiting as it turned out, for one of the hens in the chicken yard to wander too close to the fence.  The duck hen attacked the other hen through the fence and then they started getting it on.  I’ve never seen chickens brawl before.  They stretched their necks up and ruffled their feathers up and down and pecked at each other through the fence.  As soon as the other hens saw what was going on, three of them ran over to the fence to back up their buddy.  Who knew chickens had posses.  Anyway, that was the end of the fight.  The duck hen didn’t like the odds so they just glared at each other through the fence after that.