Rainy days and garden growth (was that a Freddy Fender song????)

Yesterday it started storming fairly hard around 4pm, and rained all night. Today it was cloudy in the morning, but started raining around 11 and has been since. We had a small scare of water coming into the basement, but lucily it never got any further than 6" into the mud room. This morning I cleaned out the drainpipe that goes from the patio to the ditch, so it shouldn't be a problem again. But...aside from the minor problems, the garden really needed the rain since we did more planting yesterday before it started to rain.

We put in an entire 45 foot row of tomato's, and around 35 feet of assorted peppers. We use a LOT of each every year since we make all of our own tomato sauces, soup, juice, pepper jelly, pickled hot peppers, pepper spread, and salsa from the rest. There are still three 45 foot raised beds left open, and another flat bed the same length. One of the raised beds will be for cabbages since we have decided to make our own sauerkraut, and another will go to cucumbers and squash. The others are still undecided, though I'm sure we won't have a problem filling them.

Everything we started from seed has popped up and is looking great. The potato's are almost all standing 4-5" tall already, and the beets, turnips, and parsnips are about the same. There are a lot of strawberries that are half ripe. Its soooo hard not to pick one lol. I imagine that after the next few days of sun, we'll have plenty of berries to eat...umm.....I mean make jam. The blackberries are starting to fruit too, and look like we'll get a decent crop this year. Thats of course hoping that the neighbor boys dont feed them all to the chickens again lol.

Tomorrow I am going to bring the wringer washer inside and look at setting up the single basin wash sink that I already have in the garage. Whenever I find a double-basin, it won't be a hard changeover, so for now we'll just use the single. I'm excited for the day when I can clean the electric washer and store it away or get rid of it. The drier will stay for now, until I can get the entire laundry room remodeled and permanant clotheslines and racks made and installed. I want to make overhead drying racks, but as always,height is an issue. I'm 6'3" and the ceiling is 7', so anything hanging will be right at that perfect "bust Chris in the skull" height. I'll try to make something that folds to the wall or raises tight to the ceiling. Yep...another trip to the trusty drawing board.