another rainy day

The gardens appreciate all this precipitation. I planted a couple of rows of Silver Queen sweet corn yesterday, knowing the rain was coming. It's really late to be planting something that requires eighty days to mature, but I'm only playing out there in the garden anyhow; if it does well, fine. If not, at least I tried. Cliff and his sister have plenty of peaches-and-cream corn in their plot, several different small plantings of it; so we won't be without corn-on-the-cob (when I was growing up, we called them "roasting ears", which I thought was one word and pronounced it "roastineers".

I got almost all of the garden tilled that needed it yesterday, when my Ariens tiller bit the dust; Cliff says it's going to need a new engine. Bummer. Since we plan to do some running around today, we'll stop by and see what that's going to cost... or even if we can still get an engine for such an old tiller. Cliff's sister, Rena, has a tiller that needs something minor done to it (fuel pump, I think); we may end up fixing hers. I don't know how long I'll be gardening, and I hate to spend a lot of money fixing a tiller that might not get that much use.

I'm actually glad it's a rainy day. There are a few places I want to go, and since yesterday was our anniversary, Cliff has been pursuaded to take me: I want to visit the Wild Bird Store again and see about getting an oriole feeder and a bluebird feeder... maybe even a Purple Martin house; I want to check out a couple of nurseries (and possibly Walmart) to see if there are some desirable flowers and plants marked down, since the season for planting is over; and I wouldn't mind having Olive Garden's soup, salad, and breadsticks for lunch.

Poor Cliff has to go back to work this afternoon, after several days off.