Memorial Day


It was a stormy Memorial Day eve and we got a nice rain. Memorial Day dawned bright and beautiful and we made our annual trek to the cemeteries to pay our respects. The rain, somewhat over half an inch, was the first for May, except for an inconsequential wetting early in the month, and it was welcome. Our rain barrel was down to about a third full but this rain topped off.  It was full from April rain when I attached the dripper to it about a week ago.  That set up is self-regulating because as the water level in the barrel drops there is less and less pressure and consequently the drip slows down.  The dripper is maybe 10 inches high and would stop dripping altogether once the water level in the barrel reached the same level.  Whereas it took a week to run two thirds of the water in the barrel through the dipper, it would take longer than that to lower the level to reach parity with the dripper because of the aforementioned slow down.  No doubt we will eventually learn how long it takes to reach the no-drip point, but for now the system is all charged up and the cycle begun again.

There have been years when we were hard pressed to scrounge enough flowers for a bouquet to take to the cemetery but not this year.  We had our choice of colors of snapdragons and there was penstemon, Grady flower, blanket flower and others to make a nice arrangement.

Prior to this rain the grass was in the process of going dormant, which made mowing less satisfying.  I got over the south end a couple of three weeks ago but was hampered by weather when trying to mow the north end.  Seems strange that only week before last the weather was chilly, windy and wet.  Not that the wet amounted to anything, only enough to keep me from mowing.  I’m hoping to finish up on the north end this week because I need to go over the south end again.  At least the rain will green the grass back up so it will look better when mowed.

The ducks have been hanging around the pond a lot lately.  Joyce and I went out to Wildcat Bluff to see if we could liberate some tadpoles like we did last year but there were none to be had.  There seems to be one frog left from last year’s tadpole crop.  There were as many as half a dozen tadpoles out of maybe two dozen that reached the frog stage by the end of last summer.  It will take many more tadpoles/frogs to reach a self-sustaining population and we’re one frog away from starting from zero again.

One evening we stopped by Petco after dinner and bought three catfish to put in the lily pool.  I have one of them in the aquarium and it does a good job of keeping the aquarium clean.  I don’t know if the ones we put in the lily pool will survive the summer much less the winter but if they survive the summer and make a dent in the moss growing in the lily pool, it will be worth it.