ANTICIPATION

We are ready.  We are so ready.

The month of May has come and gone without a drop of rain in most places.  Farmers were out there in the fields as soon as the ground was warm enough and had a clear month long run of seeding.  Mother Nature just sat back and let them get the crop in the ground.  On the one hand it was great to have day after endless day to do the work, on the other hand it was one endless day after another with no rain-induced down time.  But, as everyone who gathered for beer and pizza on Wednesday night to celebrate the end of seeding agreed - it is sure great to be done.

There is all kinds of residual moisture in the ground.  Last fall had a lot of rain and the snow pack this winter was higher than normal too.  Our basement sump pump has slowed down some in the last week or so but still cuts in regularly; the water table is not that far down. 

In the past few days though, our weather has gone from super, crazy windy and a little on the chilly side, to just plain hot.  I got my first sun burn of the season mowing grass yesterday because it was just so nice not to have to wear a coat and mitts that I never even thought I would need a hat and sunscreen.  I'm paying for it today.

Whether it be lettuce and tomatoes in the garden or canola and barley in the fields, everything could use a big drink of cool rain now.  Even though there is moisture in the ground we farmers and gardeners have turned our attention to the sky ... well okay, that's not exactly true any more.  The old fashioned way was to look to the skies, now-a-days we open the weather app on our phones and try to peek into the future that way.  It's every bit as reliable as cloud watching but the little video showing those coloured radar images moving across the blue dot that is us inspires high tech hope.

With the temperature at 32 degrees and the sun glaring down today we are investing a lot of hope in the weather forecast video.  The actual warnings are for Manitoba but we only live 10 miles from the border so it's easy enough to mentally include our farm under their clouds; surely they will share? 

The best kind of rain is a day long soaker - a gentle, steady rainfall that gives the ground time to drink it all in, but the weather system that they are talking about for today is not that.  Their warnings are all about unstable air masses and cold fronts which spell out thunderstorms in the weather world.  It means long odds, hit and miss possibilities, a downpour five miles away and not a drop at our place, being able to smell the rain, but not taste it.  Who needs to go to Vegas to gamble?

Beggars can't be choosers though; we'll take whatever we can get ... and if all we get is to watch the light show, feel the thunder, and smell the rain ... well, we'll take that too.

This family is a bunch of storm watchers and we have the perfect deck for it.  About two thirds of the deck is covered; the perfect place to sit and appreciate the power of a summer storm.  Rain, hail - it doesn't matter because we're safe under the roof.  It's like having the best seats in the theatre, and the door is just a few steps away if the wind turns on us and suddenly gusts out of the south or east.

Through the window above my computer screen I can see the clouds forming and I'm tempted to check the weather app again to see if anything has changed.  Or, if I went outside would I be able to hear thunder in the distance?  We've stacked the odds as much as we can think to do ... I watered my flower beds and Glen spent last night and this morning pumping out the slough at the bottom of the yard so it can dry up and I can mow it too ... now we'll just have to wait and see if we get anything out of it.

But we are ready.  We are so ready!