Rain Rain Rain

The title of this post says it all, really. It seems it has been raining for most of April and all of May. And not just Portland Spring drizzling, either - heavy showers, flooding, and hail.

I'm so glad I put my peppers, eggplants, and tomatoes out a few weeks back, now they get to face this beating. At least the temperature hasn't dropped down too far, but still - there have been gusty winds, hail and just tons of water without much sunshine. I'm afraid for my hot climate plants. I'm worried for all my hard work, and cursing my impatience and my trend towards root-binding my own seedlings this year.

Like I said before, it seems there is always something you are exceeding at, something you are failing at. But then, who would have predicted this?

I have been taking stock of what I do have through all of this: the internet to tell me what the weather will most likely be like for the next 10 days in advance, the option to replant or (heaven forbid) buy starts from up the road should things really fall apart, and lastly the knowledge that whatever happens we will not go hungry. I have been thinking back to what it must have been like for farmers, and not just in Oregon, farmers in the midwest, in the dustbowl during the depression... I cannot imagine having planted (by way of tradition or the Farmer's Almanac) most of what you needed for eating and selling, only to face week after week of torrential rains, or worse, no rain at all. I am thinking of the days before running water, before hoses and pH testers and Home Depot, before people lived close enough to a market should things fail, when their entire livelihood depended on those seeds germinating and having enough water to mature.

And there are still people today who are quite dependent on the weather, even with modern conveniences. No wonder Monsanto has gotten so big - what a great thing to have drought-tolerant, disease resistant crops! A guarantee!

This weather was also the impetus for reading that Steve Solomon book, Gardening Without Irrigation. Not because we are having a lack of water, but because the weather itself has made me reflect on a time when people depended on the weather in its entirety, when there was a need for a rain dance. "Dry gardening" was practiced, not out of trying some quirky new technique in a popular book, or to save on a utility bill, but because it was the only option. People planted differently (plants spaced farther apart, often in trenches, rather than in raised beds like people do today) in order to accommodate the natural rainfall levels. What those people would say to our monsoons this Spring here in Portland, I do not know, but all of this certainly reminds me that nothing can be that controlled when you grow living things.

In our family, we have control issues. My dad once said that he was surprised that my sister and I turned out the way we did; that he realized now, as both my sister and I enter our 30's, that he could not control the way we lived our lives. It took him 30 years to realize that. It was not a negative comment, but just one of surprise. I, too, like to control things around me. And so does my gardening friend, S. But as parents and gardeners, there is little we can ultimately control, and it is surprising we have chosen to do both. And yet, at the same time, it is good to be reminded that we shouldn't try, which is what this weather is telling me.