Rain-soaked, but It's Spring!
March 31, 2025 - April 6, 2025
Weekly journal of a Midwest gardener… A week of storms, seedlings, and a garden soaked to its roots...
Monday, March 31, 2025
The garden and I survived last night's storms. In the morning, I measured .97 inches of rain in the rain gauge. Later, a guy was here fixing some tiles in a bathroom, so I was more or less grounded for the afternoon and early evening, meaning no spur-of-the-moment trips to the local greenhouse for me. Besides, it was cold and gray and very un-springlike, so I didn’t mind staying inside, sitting quietly, printing up all my tomato and pepper seedling labels with my fancy label maker.1
Tuesday, April 1, 2025
I spent the morning sowing seeds for tomatoes and peppers. I sowed seeds for 15 different tomato varieties and nine different pepper varieties, two containers for each variety. I also checked the onion seedlings, which are coming along nicely in the seed rolls. The day was quite sunny, but I thought it was colder than it was, so when I finally went outside and realized how nice it was, I was disappointed in myself for not going out to do some garden cleanup. But I did do some writing inside.2
Wednesday, April 2, 2025
As the day went on, the wind picked up, but it was quite warm. Out in the vegetable garden, which I usually refer to as The Vegetable Garden Cathedral, the peas are just cracking through the soil. As the day ended, the storms began, and we were drenched with heavy rains and then tossed about by strong winds. The tornado siren howled loudly at least twice. It was very loud, louder than the Friday test each week, but that could be just my imagination.3 Thankfully, damage from the storm here was minimal.4
Thursday, April 3, 2025
I emptied 2.69 inches of rain out of the rain gauge at dawn. Yes, that is a lot of rain. But it was so sunny and nice in the morning that you wouldn’t have known how bad the weather was last night if you hadn’t been here yourself. I did some weeding in the garden and checked on the Patio Palace of Propagation. All is good in there.5 Around the garden, henbit purple dead nettle is growing as though intent on garden domination. But I will stop it.
Friday, April 4, 2025
There was another .27 inches of rain in the gauge from late evening storms yesterday. Also, last night around 11:30 p.m., I heard some weird animal noises outside my bedroom window. Raccoons? Feral cats? Both in a fight? I didn’t find anything a-miss in the morning, so that’s another mystery I won’t likely solve. After recording another podcast episode and eating a late lunch, it started to rain again, so I didn’t get any weeding or mowing done. Drats. This rain is starting to annoy me.
Saturday, April 5, 2025
This morning’s rain gauge catch from last night’s storms was 3.01 inches. Yes, that is a lot. I wonder how much more water the garden can absorb. I also saw that the double-flowering bloodroots, which seemed to be budding up just a few days ago, flowered and dropped their petals when I wasn’t looking. Drats. I hate to miss a spring flower, but with all this rain, it’s hard to get out and see them all in their prime.6
Sunday, April 6, 2025
The garden absorbed another .85 inches of rain from Saturday. The rain is beyond annoying. It is interrupting my spring gardening. I went out in the cold to look around and found ‘Lady Jane’ tulips in bud. I hope they last a few weeks until Easter. I think they will. I also noticed a lot of hostas are coming up now. But it was too drab and cold for me to do much in the garden. That’s fine. There is a lot to do inside to get ready for the big Easter gathering.
That’s a Week!
Going from March to April has brought cooler temperatures rather than warmer temperatures and a whole lot of rain, close to eight inches. Wrong direction, Mother Nature! Too much rain at once, Mother Nature! I need it to warm up and dry out a bit so I can mow the front lawn before it gets too tall and thick to cut in one pass.7 And, I want a few warmer, sunny days so I can leisurely stroll around to admire the spring flowers before they are beaten down by more rain. I think these are both reasonable requests! Also, I need to sow seeds for sweet peas. My friend Dee texted me that she regretted not sowing seeds for sweet peas earlier this spring, but it is too late for her to do so in Oklahoma. But I think I could still get some in the ground here in the next day or so and have some sweet pea blooms by June. So that is what I’ll do!
Quotable
"April is fertilizer for every gardener's soul." — Unknown
And the rain is hopefully bringing us lots of flowers in May.
Have a great gardening week!
Where Else to Find Me and How to Support Me
My home base is my website. My main blog is still May Dreams Gardens.
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My fancy label maker is an Epson LW-C410 Label Printer. (That link is to a blog post I wrote about how I make labels using it.)
I wrote about another Lost Lady of Garden Writing on Tuesday, Algine Neely. I also posted an April Fool’s Day post, my 19th one, on my blog.
I usually tune in to Ryan Hall Y’all on YouTube whenever the weather gets wild. He and his crew offer some of the best storm coverage around. He goes live during active storms and stays live for hours on end to provide coverage, noting where funnel clouds are likely, etc.
By minimal damage, I mean one of the posts holding up a bluebird house fell down, so I’ll fix that soon.
“All is good” for the Patio Palace of Propagation means that wild animals haven’t ravaged the pots of seeds and seedlings, and some seeds are germinating. I see no signs of life in several pots, however, including those with delphinium seeds. Patience, patience, patience.
It rained most of the day Saturday.
I wait as late as possible to mow the back lawn where all the crocuses bloom. I want the crocus foliage to have a chance to grow and start to turn brown before I mow it.