Rain and More Rain

This is nuts. It won't stop raining. When it does stop, it's overcast and gloomy. Then it rains again. It pours at times, it sprinkles intermittently, it rains all day long on weekends, and the sky roils with big clouds.

Sometimes it makes rainbows over our roofs. 

Sometimes the sun comes out for a bit to check on things. I took the brand new white cushions off the patio chairs to dry out in the air one afternoon, but it started raining again and that was that.

They're permanently soggy now.

The only thing in the garden with any color is 'Raydon's Favorite' fragrant aster and it has been beaten down to a sprawled mess. 

The aster flops over the silver stand pipe and green plastic trapdoor for my new irrigation system, a testament to gardening folly.

Yes, last fall I put in an expensive and disruptive full in-ground automated irrigation system. The spring was dry for months (literally, not a drop for 10 weeks) and I was well pleased with myself, until . . . in late June it started to rain.

We've had over 12 inches of rain since June, and October hasn't seen the sun any day yet. This is more rain and far more cloudy, overcast days than all the rain and all the cloudy days put together since we moved here.

The irrigation system was turned off a while back. Big Red the Rainbarrel filled up long ago and groans with the weight of rainwater. 

I have nowhere to put any of the water, and as it continues to come down, the barrel just overflows and drowns the new little serviceberry sapling nearby and all the ground around it.

You'd think my plants would love this, and many of the small starts do look fresher than usual, but the dry adapted garden plants I carefully selected for this climate now struggle in all the damp. This is too much for them.

And it's too much for me. Santa Fe is gorgeous on a sunny, dry day. I love the soft adobe colors in the saturated sunshine, but when the sun isn't out it can all look very, very brown and grim. And wet.

Did I mention the cold? 50 degrees, colder at night. The heat came on. 

(PS Sunday: the sun is out this morning, dodging some scattered clouds)

(Further PS Sunday afternoon: Clouded over, raining again steadily.)

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