I’m having my morning coffee, in preparation for going at the garden this morning. At 83ºF, it’s pleasantly cool outside. It’s also cloudy. There’s thunder rumbling just over the horizon. Might we get some rain? As much as I want to get some things done in the garden today, I would not be at all upset to have to call it off on account of rain. In fact, it would be so glorious to experience rain, I might even work on the garden out in the rain. It’d be really great to get some rain. I miss rain. Rain is good. Please let it rain!!!

Anyway, I don’t feel like processing a bunch of carrots and herbs today, but it has to be done at some point. The sooner I get it done, the sooner I can start getting the garden ready for the next round of growing things, and it would be nice to just pull a pack of frozen carrots out of the freezer for dinner, without the pulling, washing, cleaning, and cutting having to be done on the spot. The coffee is giving me the energy to do it (I’ve been so low on energy the last few days), but the willpower is still lacking somewhat. Too bad there isn’t an additive to put in coffee to give one willpower!

And there’s some cat news this morning. Overnight, my sweet and adorable baby, Tora, has become a teenager. Yes, the cat who almost never got into anything, who was always sweet and wonderful, has become a bit of a terror. Tora is developing an attitude. She’ll be a year old next month, so it isn’t like I am surprised by this change. One year old kitties are terrors of the worst sort. I’ve noticed that’s when they begin to push the boundaries of acceptable behavior just like human teenagers do. Hopefully, this is a stage she will outgrow quickly –more quickly than the other two, who are just now, at 3 years of age, beginning to clue into the fact that there are things they are never allowed to do.

The thunder is really rumbling now. The radar shows it raining to the south of us and to the north of us. With my luck, we won’t get a single drop at my house. I’m keeping my fingers crossed though, because I would really like to have some rain today. Not even for the garden, which has been recently well watered, but because it would be nice to have some kind of weather other than hot and awful. It could even hail, and I wouldn’t be too heartbroken about it. I just need some sort of weather other than the weather we have been having! Of course, if it does rain, it will only make the heat worse when the sun comes out (which it will), but still, it’d be nice while it lasted.

My coffee is done, and I think I have the willpower to get pull up the carrots and do all the things I need to do to get them into the freezer. Once I get them done, maybe I’ll feel like doing the same with the dill and scallions … and pulling up the non-producing aphid hotel cucumber plants will just be the icing on the cake. I’ve also done research on the beans, and my fears that they won’t set fruit due to it being too hot turns out to be true. I still like how easy those beans are to grow, but now I know not to bother planting a second planting during the summer. Live and learn! I am consoling myself over the waste of an entire pack of seeds with the fact that beans, even when they don’t produce anything edible, help increase the nitrogen levels of the soil they grow in.

Well … I am off to work on carrots. Maybe I’ll get rained on while doing so, and that would be just fine with me!