The weather has been SO nice. Rain has fallen for the past couple of weeks, so much so, that we’ve had small lakes, many days, at the back of our yard. And, with the rainfall, the crepe myrtle tree has dropped so many of its tiny white flowers that it looks like it’s been snowing.

Last Tuesday morning, it didn’t just rain. It poured. And poured and poured. David stood at the open garage door for quite some time, waiting for a break so he could easily get going to work. Then, as suddenly as it began, the rain let up, and the day was beautiful. Crisp and clear, the clouds drifted away, and I spent quite some time picking up all the small limbs that had been pounded down onto the lawn, after they’d been broken off in months past and been left suspended up in the high branches.

Thursday, for the first time in several days, I’ve been able to walk around in the back part of our yard, which is all dirt. For several days, it’s been much too wet to walk around back there. (There’s no grass growing there because of that big crepe myrtle tree on one side of the yard and the very old, large pecan tree on the other side, which create much too much shade for grass to thrive.)

But it’s quite clear, now, that the good times are over. Summer’s come crashing in. The first week of June, the temperatures ran from 77 to 85. Then, the 90’s happened. The 100’s can’t be all that far away, either. And it will most likely be that way until, oh, October.

So, Tuesday it rained, hard. Thursday, I had some indoor things to do, and didn’t go outside in the back until late in the afternoon. And, look, my plants were all droopy, and, I’m sure, wondering where the nice lady with the garden hose has gone.

EEK! Back to the normal plant care of watering all the patio plants and the front porch plants, every day, to try to keep them alive.

I’ve been trimming lots of thyme plants, to clean and dry the leaves for my sister.

I’m trying to land in the “good” and “right” categories.

It just keeps on raining. I know better than to think that summer’s going to be all balmy and pleasant. It was 82 on Thursday and will be that warm later next week. At some point, soon, it’ll be so hot that I’ll break into a sweat just by stepping out the front door to get the mail. But, for now, it’s very nice.

There was that large lake-like puddle at the back of the yard. It abated, but you can  see the where the water line is. I can walk around back there, but it’s still pretty muddy. And seriously, look how much leaf growth has come out on those hedges that lost all their leaves back in March (after the awful February freeze).

Last year, I bought five plants that I’d hoped would grow and fill these plant supports, because, as you can see, the grass doesn’t grow up to the fence. They weren’t lush, but they were growing.  Until February. Then, they were little bare sticks. For weeks, I looked them over. Nothing. For weeks. Then, one started to put out a few leaves. Hmm, not exactly a Ta-Dah moment. But then, another one leafed out. Two out of five. Not spectacular. Then, I’m not kidding, another one put out some leaves. If you were to label them: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, plants 1, 3, and 5 were leafing out. Two and 4? Nothing. But now, I’m thinking I should wait a while longer before pulling up those bare sticks. Maybe?

Because I’ve needed to do some thyme pruning, I looked up how and when, etc., to take care of my thyme plants. One of the first things I read was that I should harvest my thyme plants before they flowered. Hmmm. Oh Dear. I’d been really charmed by the pretty little white flowers that some of the thyme plants were putting out. Bees came to the flowers, and I enjoyed watching them flit around when I was moving some liriope plants to a different place and putting some bricks across the lower border. So now, it is way to late for those plants to be at their peak. But, seriously, it’s not like I don’t have some other choices here. And, it doesn’t seem like all the varieties do bloom.

Two or three years ago, I went to the work place of a friend who works with a helping agency. Part of what he does is to help people learn how to grow a garden to provide fresh, wholesome vegetables for their family. I saw an interesting plant and he said it was Malabar spinach. Oh, I said, I don’t really like spinach. Well, he said, then grow it because it’s an attractive plant. He said it would grow and twine around a trellis. So I got some, and for the previous two or three years, I grew a whole trellis full of the plant. It would die back in the winter and come back in the spring. This year, I waited and waited and it didn’t show up. Alas. The trellis is in the bed where I also have some Hosta plants, so I was alert to weeds, etc., coming up. Three weeks, or so, ago, I was pulling weeds and all those little plants that come up, not particularly wanted, and there were a bunch more of those little seedling things, and as I pulled out the last one, I thought, Hmmm, were those some of the Malabar Spinach seeds that have just needed some time (after February) to germinate. Well, too bad for me, then. I’d pulled them all up. But, I’d been checking, just to be sure, and more of those little seedlings are coming. I can’t tell, yet, if it’s the spinach, after all. I’ll just have to wait a little longer. Hope so. The trellis is all ready!

The White-Edged Hosta has some flowers, and to the right of the blooms (hard to see) is a bud for more.

Yes, I know Paul is talking about people, but I’m paying attention to the analogy. If no one plants seeds and no one waters them, then there aren’t going to be any vegetables. Or fruits. Or bread.

Here in Central Texas, we’re having the Storm Before the Lull.

Every time it rains, I’m thrilled. It’s springtime, and so lots of rain isn’t unusual. But, usually by mid-June or so, rainfall is a distant memory. Now, the trees look great, the lawns look lovely, the flowers are blooming. And we’re needing to have the sprinkler systems checked because it’s not going to keep on raining every time we turn around. The temperature will be rising, the sun’ll be beating down pretty regularly, and all the living things, flora and fauna, will be starting to wilt in the heat.

And it will be like that until September, or maybe later.

Sure, there might be a rain shower. Every now and then. Maybe.

But for now, summer’s heat seems like a distant omen that we understand might be coming, but we’ve sort of put it out of our minds.

Here’s what happened a couple of days ago: Tuesday is the day the mowers come, and they do three yards on a row on our block. They moved the mowers off the truck, hurried into mowing mode, racing around my and my neighbors yards, trimming, blowing away the leaves and grass, and quickly and efficiently getting our yards into shape. Then, they packed up and roared away. Very efficient.

I needed to make a trip to the drug store, which I did right after the mowers were done. And, a bit later, after I was back home, I walked by the front door and saw that torrents of rain were pouring down. “Well,” I thought. “That explains their rush.”

It rained like that for the rest of the day and into the night.

The next morning, here’s what I saw in my back yard. A bit of a lake. Rain had fallen, nonstop, for several hours.

Peter’s wading pool, which has several uses besides splashing around in the water. It can be a roof. It can be a wall for a structure. It can be a sand box. And, if I don’t empty it out soon, it can be a breeding ground for mosquitoes.

So versatile.

All the rain has made the front yard look great. The small dead part at the base of the light is the result of that February freeze. It is a little bit slow coming back. I’m sure it’ll come around.

But all in all, it’s been a very nice spring around here.

My teaching, let it fall like a gentle rain, my words arrive like morning dew,
Like a sprinkling rain on new grass, like spring showers on the garden.

Deuteronomy 32:2 (The Message Translation)

I believe I’m going to start taking my Bible study stuff outside each morning. I could use some teaching falling like a gentle rain, arriving each morning like dew.