There is nothing like a week of humidity and heavy downpours to really reinforce the importance of weather to someone who works entirely outdoors. When one is essentially camping, that importance becomes magnified: every trip to the bathroom or the kitchen sink involves planning. When those downpours are not just downpours, but veer into the territory of lightning, hail, and tornado warnings, the camper does not have a basement to hide out in. Instead, one must take cover, say, under a nearby concrete bridge. Hypothetically, that might have happened this week to some hypothetical semi-campers.
On the hottest day yet, with a humidity so thick you could cut it with the dullest of better knives, we transplanted about an acre with of beets, zucchini, eggplant, tomatoes, and cucumbers. Before making a beeline for a dip in the stream, we covered about a third of them to protect them from potentially damaging downpours. Had we heard anything about hail, we probably would have tried to cover the rest of them, but the damage wasn't as bad as it could have been. The plants that were still small had less surface area to damage - the large leaves of older, larger plants were a bit holey after the hail. We had taken advantage of the heat to move our not-so-chicky chickens out to the pasture, which meant that we had to go rescue them after the huge storm. The rain continued all week and into the weekend, so we and the chickens are itching to get outside next week, when the weather looks much much more enjoyable. Meanwhile, I hope the riverbank holds up!
Thinking about: weather patterns, Bluths, good breeding
Eating: fresh-picked greens(!), farro salad, avocado and freshest egg breakfast tacos
Reading: Kelly Klober's Dirt Hog, Michael Ruhlman's Ratio, Jane Smith's The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants
