Our heatwave finally broke and the rain has been falling off and on for the last several days. It was still wet out when I went to check on things this morning, much to my relief, because I didn’t feel much like messing with the sprinklers or misters yet.

The break in the heat means I can go out and do the feeding, harvesting and weeding without having a near death experience. What few wasps are left out there tend to stay away until it hits about 80 degrees out and they disappear completely when it’s raining (yay!).

While it’s storming hard I can do things inside like chop up and dehydrate more onions and tomatoes.

It seems like the garden and flower beds respond so much better to rain water than sprinkler water anyway. The Black Simpson lettuce doubled in size practically overnight!

Someone had commented here awhile back that rain water is a good fertilizer so I looked into it and sure enough, it really is better for our plants because it contains micronutrients, nitrogen and extra oxygen.

The morning glory girl is really filling out fast now.

And even the nasturiums are finally taking off after floundering in the heat the last several weeks.

I wish the rain was here to stay, but it looks like today is the last day in the forecast before it goes back to being in the 80’s. Which is fine, that’s better than the high 90’s and is still warm enough to help the crops and flowers continue to grow without burning the grass and putting me into a mast cell coma.

The chickens and pheasant have been hiding out from the rain but the ducks and the pups are really loving it. The husky yard is a giant mud hole right now which means they can’t come inside for a few days, but they are having way too much fun to care.

Until I make soup, that is. As soon as the scent reaches them a group howl starts up, letting the whole neighborhood know just how mean we are to them.

The rain means the ducks have been acting up and are more noisy than usual, splashing around in their always-full pond, gobbling up the worms that have surfaced and lounging in the shade of the sun and wildflowers between rain storms.

Their activity stirs up the pups, of course. The corn has created a great visual barrier between the dog yard and the duck pen, but there’s a gap between it and the sunflowers that gives the doggies a small viewing window.

We are still looking at different ways to collect rainwater here, it’s on our to-do list for being more self sufficient and hopefully will save us some money in the coming years. Our water bill has practically doubled the last couple of months since we’re on a metered well, but it’s been well worth it!