Rain!

My area of the country has been sadly lacking in the rain department.  In comparison to the southern part of the state we don't have much to complain about.

However, we probably hadn't had rain since the first part of June. It was getting a bit dire out at my happy place.  The grass was starting to turn brown and the veggie garden was starting to look stressed and dried out.

We did what what we could with trying to keep things watered.  We carried buckets of water and I even filched water from the swimming pool. It finally got to the point where the creek dried out ... completely.  As in no water running and the sand at the bottom of the creek bed was dried out.  No ground water seeping into the creek to keep it wet.

I got pretty sad.  It got hard to go out there and see that things were slowly dying and that there really wasn't much I could do.  There is a sandpoint well out there but it's strictly light use.  The pressure tank is small and would be turning on constantly and probably burn out. There is no way we can use it for the hours of watering the garden would need.

A few days ago it rained!!!!! The skies opened up and the rain poured down like manna from heaven.  Immediately you can tell a difference in the garden.  Nothing is looking wilted, nothing looks stressed.  It's wonderful.

This is a couple of pumpkin vines.  I'm so impressed with how big they have gotten.  I did start these from seeds.

Look!  A baby squash.  I'm pretty excited to see this. I started winter squash plants from seeds back in April.  I'm crossing my fingers that we get more than two squash this year.  Last year I started seeds in the garden and I ran out of time before the frost hit and killed the vines.

 Here is one of my tomatoes.  My tomatoes are growing and doing well.  I don't know if they will ripen in time or if we will need to bring them home at the end of the season and let the ripen.

 

Here is a shot of one of the grapevines we planted this year.

Grapes on one of the other grapevines we planted this year.  The grapes are the size of smallish marbles. 

This year the raspberries seem to have exploded a bit.  I'm finding raspberry canes in the least expected places.  Most of the raspberry canes we have are wild.  This is our third season out there so I imagine that the canes are starting to hit their stride, so to speak.  I'm surprised that the wildlife hasn't come and eaten them.