May 3-4, 2013

Rain, that is how you can define this weekend. I don't think it ever stopped, though it was mostly light. Actually, Friday morning we had snow. Reported as the first ever recorded May snow in Arkansas. The rain gauge showed just over an inch on Saturday.

Mop

Being too wet to do much of anything outside, I moped most of the floor. It wasn't easy, but it sure needed it. If I could only figure out how to keep it clean. (We need a mud room out back.)

Burn

With light rain continuing Saturday morning and everything so wet, about the only thing to do was burn more cedar limbs. I only had limbs from two trees left, the last of the tornado downed cedars. I tackled the big tree which was laid down right up a draw first. It was a pain dragging the limbs out of the draw, but so nice to get them out of the way. The other tree was across gum creek. I had previously drug those limbs up the ridge to where it was open enough for a burn. There were fewer of these, so it went pretty fast. All told I spent about 3.5 hours burning -- and felt exhausted.

Walking back to the truck (parked before the creek confluence again), I found a huge patch of thistle and kicked it up. I don't really expect that to kill it, but it should certainly set it back some. I've been doing this for months and can't ever recall seeing so much thistle so early. I hope that it is no worse than usual this summer.

Garden

Before leaving I ventured into the garden and picked the few radishes that had grown and clipped spinach leaves. I was impressed with the spinach yield.

I don't remember the name of this plant Sally added to the garden last year, but it has been in full bloom for weeks. It is also set to take over much more of the garden. I thought it was verbena, but I looked that up and it is not.