April Showers
April has always been the pivotal Spring month where I've lived, warming up and seeing everything start to waken. The saying "April showers bring May flowers" is always in my head when it rains.
It's certainly been raining a lot here in St. Louis lately -- we've gotten over 3" (8cm) over the last few days. Incidentally, that tub is a recent garage sale find. I was thinking of using it for a small water feature -- I may want to move it into place now and just let the rain fill it up.
I'm not complaining -- except for some leaks in the basement -- I'm glad to get the rain, as I fear we'll have another very dry summer.
I haven't had to water seedlings for quite a while:
The pond sure is full:
Lots of space for the tadpoles -- those toads have been busy!
Speaking of the pond, it's starting to look good again:
I'm talking about the way the plants make it look so much better -- it's not the water itself that's looking good. In fact the water quality is quite poor again, very muddy.
All of this rainfall has started some of the bamboo shooting:
It looks like we've replaced the rain with cold weather, so I probably won't see more bamboo shoots emerge until it warms back up. A frost is expected tonight, and I saw a few snowflakes this morning.
The good news is it looks like there's no more rain in the forecast until Tuesday, which gives all of the plants a chance to drink some of this up.
Come on May flowers!
(If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring? Pilgrims of course!)
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My patio pond is nearly full from the rain fall too. We have an underground basin to store water - it holds 1000 gallons, but now we're wishing it held 9 or 10 thousand! I think it would be full to the brim. We've been pumping water OUT of the pond to minimize the flooding - makes me sad to see all that good rainwater go to waste!
Hahaha...did you make up that May flower joke or is an oldie I've just not ever heard?
We're getting some rain today but it has been oddly dry around here. In fact yesterday I noticed the biggest leaf on my gunnera had completely collapsed. A dry gunnera in April, I didn't think that was possible.
The Mayflower joke is an oldie but a goodie. :)
Can you send some of that rain our way? I don't think the Sacramento area has even reached 3" for all of 2013. I'm about to turn on our automatic irrigation for the year. Everything is bone dry...
Oh, that pond is so pretty!
Love the joke!
We've had three April showers to bring May flowers for a total of 5 1/2 inches this month. Now if only we could get that much in July!
Have a wonderful week-end!
Lea
Lea's Menagerie
Oh yes, gotta love those spring rains! Sadly, we've had a really dry spring this year in PDX, so far. I was amazed that our bamboo that we planted last year (and subsequently did nothing) suddenly sent up new stems...a foot or more above the rest of the plants...finally, some height!