It's Raining, It's Pouring

and strangely, neither the old man nor the old woman are snoring.  We are both surprisingly productive.

The rain has been steady, without a lot of bluster.  Usually cloudy days make me sad; somehow, this rain has been different.  

It shows up at the oddest times.  5:30 in the morning, when even the sun knows better than to disturb my sleep.   10:30 at night, after a beautiful, clear, blue sky, sunny Arizona day, just when we walked outside to prowl the property before bed.  From 8 to 11am,  just enough to thwart any hope I might have had of going to Grandma's Garden.

The plants are delighted. During a dry spell, I walked up one street and down another in our neighborhood,  amazed at how healthy everything looked.  That prompted me to walk past my yard a few times, casting a critical eye on what it was now possible for me to do without pain.  I drew X's where things needed to go, knowing that I would enjoy trying to remember exactly the right plant to be placed there without leaving myself a note.  

And I was right.  

There was sunshine enough to dig in the dirt, which, softened by the incessant and persistent and most of all steady rainfall, was delightfully decadent to dig through.  Granted, there were large stones and pebbles and lots of grit in my trowel, but I was transplanting flora which had proven their ability to survive, if not thrive, in that exact same soil.  

I dug away, with abandon.  The yellow Mexican Bird of Paradise has been the same size since it was planted in the ought's; it gave up its residence without much of a struggle and looks pretty happy outside my office window in its new home, under a volunteer palo verde.  

I dug out stumps of barrel cacti gone bad, toppling over from geocentrism and an inability for their roots to keep up with their lean.  I suppose I could get Not-Kathy to devise another sling for them.

I have empty spots due to their demise and the death of the big tree.  I also have rapidly reproducing succulents. My trowel and I disengaged pups from the mother plant

and redistributed them broadly and widely.

It wont' take long until they grow big and tall and wide, and make pups of their own to fill the field.  

I forgot how satisfying it is to dig in the dirt, and not have it fight you with every turn.  It feeds my soul.