Rainy day lull

It was a late spring, and the last week has been a hard one. Lilah has been very sick, and the human parts of the family have been, too. I was home two days last week, and Mike and Anwyn were each home three. Leo is just getting sick now.  In the midst of all that mucous and vomit, it has rained.  In the last two weeks, there have only been two days where it didn't rain most of the day. When you are sick, though, it doesn't mater as much that you are housebound.



The rain has slowed garden production, which means it is the right pace for my ill family. The asparagus just finished, and we have been eating herbs and a variety of greens for a couple of weeks. Mike ate one cherry tomato today and I made a nice brochette with the fresh basil yesterday. The big star, however, is the flowers.

It was a hard winter and I lost some perennials.  Because things were late, however, my tulips, narcissus, flox, iris, chives, anemone, and lily-of-the-valley are all blooming at the same time (check out Mike's June album of garden pics to see all the purple and pink). The yard is a sea of pinks and purples and the rain has kept them all frozen together for a protracted period of time.  Mike and I look out our window in the rain and admire the view. Everything looks incredibly lush, and it is cool and humid.

In breaks in the rain in the last couple days (typically no more than 40 mins.) we go out and do a bit to try to keep the yard under control. Mowing, weeding the garden and picking rhubarb to freeze all occur in these little windows of time. That is also about right for sickness, as we need to recover for about 2 hours for each 1/2 hour slowly pushing the mower. As you might imagine, we've been mostly eating out of the freezer as no one was hungry and no one was well enough to cook except Leora, who is writing finals.

Today we finally felt well enough to make all our meals: blueberry pancakes in the am, veggie soup and rhubarb crisp for lunch, and a fresh garden salad for supper later tonight. My greens and brasicas (think cabbage and kohlrabi) are happily co-habitating in a square foot bed on the driveway that tolerates all the damp very well.

All things considered, the misfortune has fit together so well as to actually seem like a pleasant lull combined with feeling crummy.