Rain Rain Go AWAY

Things at the Sume House were very busy last weekend---doing all the final prep things; mowing grass, spreading the mountain of beauty bark, hiding all the objects we normally manage to ignore (I can’t tell you WHERE we hid them, but trust me we still have a secret stash of what Shane lovingly referred to as “our white trash pile”. We’re just pretending that we don’t... have a secret stash. And as a side note: who knew they made camo tarps that big?)

All was proceeding according to plan. Then on Sunday afternoon the heavens opened up and the rains began. Rains of biblical proportions, frog strangling rains, rains that could only be adequately described as a deluge. Rains that seemed to be centered directly over my location. I ran around, moving pots of flowers under shelter, propping umbrellas over the flowers in my gardens that needed shelter from the storm-- while rain might not hurt the rhubarb it sure won’t help the petunias. At one point during the down pour I had a near drowning experience, holding a golf umbrella over a pot of pale pink petunias while trying to brace a slightly smaller umbrella over another pot of matching petunias eight feet away. I thankfully managed to keep the flowers dry but I looked like a drowned rat.

Rain is good for the grass, I tell myself, rain is a good dust suppression system. But the truth is, rain is really harshing my mellow. Every day, the first thing I do upon waking is check my phone for the weather and every day the weather app assures me that Saturday, AKA Wedding Day, will be sunny. It might be 79*, or maybe 84*, the app isn’t really sure. But sunny—no rain. 

PROMISE? 

The Wedding Draws Ever Nigh

The wedding is a little over a week away...Crunch time, if you will. And the weather? Well, the weather is not following the rules for July. Mainly the number two rule, which is that it STOPS raining after July 4^th---unless July 5^th falls on a weekend, then it will stop raining on the first Monday following July 4^th. Summer officially arrives then, feel free to plan your BBQs, garage sales and backyard weddings after that with absolutely no fear of getting rained on...

Statistically speaking, this is a FACT. A warm, dry, beautiful, sunny fact...But you might recall what Mark Twain said about that: There are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics.

Annie Cat doesn't like rain either...

So I run around with my umbrellas and my stinky spray and climb on the lawn mower every time the sun peeks its head out for more than five minutes and then remember that, under the shelter of umbrellas, my plants aren’t getting any of Nature’s water. So I drag out my garden hoses and water my pots. And now it’s raining again. Park the mower, head back in the house and get back to painting my French doors---stuck inside the house.

It seemed like a good idea at the time... a little white paint just to freshen the French doors up...because earlier I had painted the new door trim white, which made the doors themselves suddenly look dingy---oh look! The sun is out!! SQUIRREL!!!

The rain is also putting a kink in my plan to foil the elk with stinky spray---I’m using “Invisible Fence” and I swear by it—but every time I’m spraying---once a week, instead of once a month, just to be extra insured---I can feel raindrops before I’m even finished, let alone before the spray has had time to dry for full efficacy.

SIGH.

The flowers are ready....