Leif takes more naps on the floor than he does in his bed. I draped the blanket over him to keep him snuggy (as if that would be a problem on a day in the high 80s).
We had a big storm come through yesterday...it rained (well, it was more like being under a giant waterfall) and it hailed a lot of marble-sized hail, which sounded rather amazing as it hit the tin roof. I took this picture after the hail stopped, but while it was still raining. The hail melted very quickly, so even by the time I took this picture, most of it was melted.
This was one of the last pictures I took, so most of the hail was melted. It did a lot of damage to my garden, (the leaves all have gaping holes where the hail passed through) but I'm thinking most of the plants will recover and keep growing. See the lake of water in the right of the picture? That's the driveway, and all of that water and silt came flooding into the garage. Lovely.
This was between the trashcan and the house, underneath the eaves of the house. Even that protected area managed to get pelted with hail!
This is our ghetto rain-harvesting technique. We left a row of buckets in the drip line from the roof (tin roof water is the cleanest type of water!) to use for the garden. These buckets were nearly full in less than five minutes. They would have been completely full in less than a minute, I reckon, except that the rain came so fast and hard that the water streamed off the roof farther out than it usually does, so the buckets were just catching the little drips, not the deluge. Oh well. We still have a nice amount of water to water our garden with (not that it needs it today!)
Jason and Leif show off the newly hung curtains.
The house is now completely painted, all the trim is back up, and now, our bedroom curtains are up. Yes, they don't really fit the windows, and yes, they are too short. But they really cut down on the amount of light that pours in to the bedroom. Now that they're up, it should be cooler in the bedroom (the light made it HOT in there, which always made the AC kick on) and we should be able to sleep past sunrise, which is a good thing! :) They work, and they make me happy!
The cheese duo sportin' some poses.
The tough guy look. Leif has been working on his "mean" face - furrowed brow, narrowed eyes. When I tell him to stop doing something, he gives me his "mean" look, and I have to turn away so that he doesn't see me laughing. It's so funny!
More silliness...
Huuuuuuggggggggsss!
More silliness/cheesiness.
Oh, aren't they cute?
Anyway, I'm just pleased as punch to have my house back together. The furniture is back against the walls, and not floating in the middle of the room while we patched and painted. We no longer have to put the furniture back where it belongs when company comes to visit, only to pull it back out to resume working after they're gone. The chaos of a house being worked on is now gone, and we can focus instead on other things. It was 18 months (to the day I think) since we moved here that the painting was completed. A week later, all the trim was back up, and the windoware went up, too! A few more electrical plates need to be purchased and put up, but that is nothing.
BORING GARDENING STUFF FROM HERE TO THE END OF THE POST:
In other news, my tomatoes are doing...not well, and not because of the hailstorm, either. They just aren't growing very fast. The Homestead and Floradade tomatoes are long spindly things, which STILL only have one set of true leaves on them - and they've been growing for eons. They're super long spindly things that can't really stand up straight. The other ones I planted are doing okay, but they're still not growing fast enough. After all this time, they're still only a few inches high. I reckon I'll have to go buy large seedlings now if I want tomatoes in my garden this season - but that's a total bummer. I might just skip tomatoes this year.
In comparison, the volunteer tomato in my garden is three times as big as the ones that I planted, and it only just came up in the past week or two. Too bad there is only one volunteer!
The Christmas Lima beans are doing very well. They're the tallest, healthiest plants on my Bean Trellis. I thought they were the biggest gamble of the beans that I planted. The ones I thought would be the best, Thai Long Beans, are actually the smallest plants by far.
The white scallop squash were growing beautifully until the hail storm yesterday. Hopefully, they'll keep on growing. I planted all of the squash, watermelon, cukes, and chard too close to each other (dur!). The white scallop squash are dwarfing the chard and their giant leaves are starting to prevent the chard from getting any sun. Luckily, I have lots of space where the tomatoes were going to go that I can now use to plant some more chard.
Yesterday, I finished harvesting the Bok Choy seeds. I now have double the amount of seeds I started out with. The arugula has gone to seed, too, so I'll be harvesting those soon.
Enough of that.
Happy Days!
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