I'm milking in the rain, just milking in the rain

.....what a glorious feeling not to hear grass crunching again.

The sound of thunder woke me up (but didn't get me up) around 4 this morning.  Oh, what a delightful sound.  And the rain pelting against the windows was a wonderful lullaby.  The storm didn't last very long, but the rain kept up at a steady pace and it is still, and will continue raining for much of the day today if the radar is to be believed.

We soooo needed this rain.  I've given up on the tomatoes & peppers in the garden and my minuscule Fall Garden (which is really only a small hill of beans and five mounds of globe zucchini) was almost done in by the lack of rainfall and intense heat.  The grass in our yard probably won't be able to totally bounce back, it will just become wet and sodden dead brown grass.  We've had several casualties from the heat & lack of rain.  There are two small oak trees in the goat pen that have totally dried up (although it could be from whatever fungus is attacking the older oaks) and two of my blueberry bushes are now just krispy sticks, even with me having watered them throughout the heatwave.

I think I'm just going to have to give up on growing blueberries.  We've had different varieties over the course of four years now (maybe even five) and only one year did I get a dozen berries out of it.  I think the Ozark summer heat is just too much for them.  But then I wonder how the berry farm in town manages to keep theirs alive?  I just know I'm sick of spending fifteen bucks every time one dies, nursing the stick for two years and then have it turn into a dead stick.  Maybe once we get our Permaculture Garden going I'll stick some blueberry bushes in the partial shade of one of the mulberry or apple trees.  Oh!  And speaking of the future Permaculture Garden, lookie what we have for it:

Dirt!  Glorious dirt!  Well, dirt with some rocks, but I'll take it.

Paul managed to have some "dirt" and fill hauled over to our place last week.  The stuff that is mostly crunched up asphalt we'll put on our driveway and the stuff that was mostly dirt he dumped into the Permaculture Garden area.  I'm going to have to screen through it if I want to put it in raised beds, otherwise Paul is going to just distribute it throughout the area.  Unfortunately this area, as are most areas around here, is on a slope so I think we're going to have to make some berms every so often or rig up some sort of terrace system using large logs or all that dirt he just brought in will end up in the river.

The to-do list never ends, does it?