Rain rain...come back and shower!

There's an old nursery rhyme that goes as follows:

Rain rain, go away,
Come again another day.

Although it always stuck with me, I never much minded the rain. I actually kinda love it. I was the type to dance in the rain when I was younger. I don't necessarily go out in the rain as much anymore, but I still love it. Rain brings cool weather and flowers. And now that I have a garden again...I want that fucker to come water my garden so I don't have to.

It's been so dry recently that I've been watering twice per day with my recent plantings, and I'm pretty sure it's been barely penetrating the ground even with trying to do an initial minor watering and coming back. Every time I check it's still pretty damn dry underneath. But I can't really afford gallons and gallons of water every day. I figure I'll just give enough that it waters the first few inches, enough to get the seeds to germinate, and then I'll just have to wait for the real rain.

Except the other day it rained for hours, and it still barely penetrated the ground, even with my watering.

Makes me really worried about my garden. I have a few barrels I save rain water in, but I really need to up my game to ensure I can save hundreds of gallons, rather than just maybe 100 gallons, which isn't nearly enough.

Even with that, some of my plants have decided to show their leaves.

Most all of my squash seeds are old as hell, left over or harvested from previous years. So it's pretty impressive that I actually managed to get quite a few to germinate! I hope a few are white pattypan squash, which I had bought years ago, but never managed to get to harvest due to bugs. They're really quite beautiful squash. No idea if they're any good though. I think I might harvest a few early this year, whatever they are. And by a few I might mean however many I can eat as fast as I can eat them, because I have heard they tend to produce more the faster you pick them.

I think a few near the end are acorn squash, which if I remember correctly have these dark green leaves. I'm really excited by that, because I really love acorn squash. It's one of my favorites. I also really love spaghetti squash, and I think that's actually what some of the ones that I planted are that were unlabeled from a previous year. They ended up being dried and never labeled because lazy.

I think the picture might be a spaghetti squash. Could be a patty pan for all I know though. I know it's growing pretty damn fast though.

And I actually pulled that grass after taking the picture. I dunno if I just missed it while I was pulling everything out, or if maybe it somehow was buried or something. It's not new growth. It's on the far end of the bed, so I might have just not been able to easily get it. It's near a retaining wall.

My pepper plant looks good too!

It's a Scorpion "Butch"...which when I bought it at the veggie market, my brain didn't really click with it being a Trinidad Scorpion. I just heard "Butch" and was like "Oh, I don't know that pepper! That sounds interesting. The little picture looks cool. This should be nice for a bit hotter of a pepper to grow, since my jalapenos will take a while to come up."

Narrator: "And that was his biggest mistake. Soon it would lead to the destruction of his universe."

I really like hot pepper. Like REALLY like. I go to places sometimes, order the hottest thing on the menu, tell them to make it extra hot, and don't think it's hot enough.

I once went to a place fabled to be the hottest restaurant in an area, ordered extra hot sauce on the side, with the hottest thing on the menu, and used the whole thing of hot pepper oil, because I didn't want it going to waste. With the cup of hot pepper oil it was pretty hot. I was sweating. It wasn't that hot by itself though. People that thought that place was the hottest haven't eaten much hot food. Or they were afraid to give me something actually hot.

With all that being said, I'm not an idiot. I don't want to eat the hottest pepper in the world. How can I even use that? I can only use it to make hot sauce, with gloves on, and never use it in any food for any other people but myself.

But I do look forward to saving the seeds and seeing what kind of cross breeds I can get from it, as well as selective breeding it to not look like it's got a boner. Or maybe look more like a boner. Not sure.

I'm kind of annoyed the picture on the tag didn't look more like the Scorpion pepper, so I would recognize it. Maybe I didn't look close enough though.

So now I got a pepper plant that might just kill someone if the idiot tried to eat it raw.

I'm not even sure if I can compost the peppers effectively, because I've heard worms don't really like hot peppers too much. I don't think they'd like a pepper that's over 400 times as hot as a jalapeno.

I like hot things, but I'm not sure I want something that hot. I like a jalapeno or two in my serving most times. Sometimes I like maybe a habanero or scotch bonnet and a jalapeno in my serving. Depends on how hot the peppers are and what my mood is. I like putting dried pepper flakes on pretty much every meal. I like a few drops of Daves Insanity Sauce, when I have it. I don't like heart palpitations.

Whatever. Guess I just gotta come up with scary uses for this insane pepper.

Despite it being mostly dry lately here, and occasionally a bit hotter than I like, it did rain quite a bit one day, even if it didn't really penetrate the ground, and it did seem to have quite a bit of an effect on my plants. Somehow the squash plants have not only just popped up, with a lot better germination that I would have expected, but they're already getting their real leaves, and exploding in size.

That picture was taken yesterday, after it had gotten more than a bit of rain. Had a bit of trouble trying to get time to talk about all this, or I would have posted shortly after taking this picture.

I'm not exactly sure what type of squash that is, because I planted quite a few pretty close in staggered rows to try to ensure I got enough plants, since the seeds were pretty old, and I expect to maybe lose a few plants to some bugs, since I've had quite a big problem with them in previous years. But I'm resolved to do whatever it takes to save my plants this year.

I'm not sure what the germination rate was, but despite some of the seeds actually looking like they had degraded, and then being left outside for years, I'm pretty sure quite a few of them germinated. Thankfully I didn't plant the plants so dense that I had to thin them, because I really don't like thinning plants, and I'm not even sure what types of squash they are, and I could be thinning ones that I really want for the sake of ones I could give a fuck about.

What I'm really worried about though is some of my other plants that are still pretty damn small.

I have bunnies in my area. There was one near my window earlier today. For all I know, he just dined on some turnip greens.

Time for planting certain things, like turnip greens, is winding down in my area, and I still have a massive amount of work, preparing different beds, and planting more things.

I don't really see the pak choi coming up that strong. There are some small plants around the spot where I put them, but I'm not sure if I should move the mulch to check on how they're doing, to see if I should plant some more in that area. I know I should plant a lot more across the other side of the bed.

I'm also worried about where I should plant the okra, which I should probably plant pretty soon. I think that it gets pretty big, so I should probably plant it somewhere I don't mind the shade, or might actually like it. The problem is that the places where I would like shade the most is where the soil is the worst.

Perhaps I should just try planting it where I need the shade and just figuring out what to do about giving it more nutrients later. Maybe making some compost tea.

I also haven't planted any eggplant yet.

Right now, with what I have planted, I will probably have enough to do quite a few dinners, and improve the quality of many other meals. But that's only if I can keep my squash alive. If I can't do that, and the rabbits fuck with the plants they like, then I might be pretty well fucked. Especially since beans have never really done that well for me, and I still haven't planted any peas, because I don't have any.

I might try to see about going to a local bulk nutrition store and seeing what they have for organic legumes and peas and such. Maybe it will work, maybe not. I've germinated store bought beans before. Not exactly a great time to be searching for things at stores.

Something that's had a huge impact on getting started in my garden again has been the fact that I'm not alone in this idea that maybe I should be growing some things. A ton of people have come to this conclusion. Entire stores have been sold out online. I hopefully got an order of some extra seeds coming, but it's been almost a week and they haven't sent yet, because of this whole crap pandemic.

I guess I'll be alright if this is all I can get. Plus the extra seeds I got I haven't planted yet. Mainly it's been just battling not overworking myself too much and not getting too much sun. If I can manage to get the beds expanded a bit, and get more planted, I'll be alright probably. But would be nice if I could get a few extra things to plant as well.

I also think I'm going to do a few trays of lettuce, but I haven't done that yet because I've been hoping to try to get some better soil, but having some issues with that, due to the pandemic. I'll probably just have to either use some of my compost, which isn't the best, because my soil isn't the best to begin with, and I mix it with my soil, or just get a bag of top soil from a local store.

I'd really prefer to be able to get something a bit less corporate GMO. I'm really risking my plants buying something from a big box store.

I guess for not I just gotta continue to pace myself, continue to get whatever mulch I can, continue to expand my garden and plant more, and try not to get burned by the sun, pass out from exhaustion, or get my plants ate.

Hopefully it will rain tomorrow.