June has provided some great weather, especially if you happen to be a) a duck and/or b) a gardener. I happen to be neither.
I may waddle, but I have no feathers and have to work pretty darn hard to stay afloat in the water, and I might be a gardener if the weather would co-operate and dry up!, but whenever I have a few free moments to go outside and play, it rains. Or I’m stuck playing catch-up with the weeds.
Year after year, my neighbours gaze in the direction of my yard and sadly shake their heads. Yes, good things take time, but mine is taking forever. No thanks to the constant rain this month.
The vegetable garden that I started in May - and many, many thanks to my dear neighbours Judy and Stuart Davison for lending me their roto-tiller - is sitting empty still, except for the billions of weed seedlings that are very happy with all the rain.
The plants I had intended to fill the garden with are sitting on the back deck, getting pummelled by the rain because there is no longer a roof on the deck to protect them - it was torn off early this Spring in a wind storm. It really hasn’t been a promising year, weatherwise.
On Saturday, I saw a marmot taking a measurement of the river’s depth down by the River Inn. It isn’t only people who are being displaced by the rising water this year.
As I read about the evacuation alerts in the Lower Mainland, coupled with the electrical storm we had on Saturday night, I was thinking of the emergency workers who have to work in miserable conditions - whether they’re volunteers who spend hours sandbagging the shorelines or linemen for the utility companies who have to repair lines and equipment when they’d rather be warm and dry and at home.
Last week an Environment Canada guy was saying that it’s been one of the wettest Junes in recent years, but not a record year. But that was last week. I’m thinking that a week can make a big difference.
The question is now, do I get down and muddy and plant my embattled vegetables or do I toss in the sodden towel and wait for next year? Mmmm, mud pies....
Wendy Coomber is editor of the Ashcroft-Cache Creek Journal