A Taste of Spring

Rain. All day. Drizzly, drippy rain. We have a plastic skylight right above my computer chair, and I can hear it pitty-patting down. If we don't get some kind of precipitation, it's really difficult to water my trees in the winter. I have a couple of tanks we fill in the summer, with buried piping running to gravity-fed faucets out by the trees and garden. But we have to drain all that before it freezes, so I'm left with only the house faucet, dragging around a few hundred feet of hose. I'm so happy to get rain!

I'd prefer cold and snow, but will take anything. This is high-desert - we only get six or seven inches of precipitation a year, and that's in the good years. And then, usually as snow December through April, nothing at all June through September. I'm hoping the weather swings back to cold, so the fruit trees don't start to break dormancy. My trees have the highest chill hours I can find, that are still hardy enough to bear here, but every year it's a toss-up as to whether I get anything.

The chickens liked the rain. Six eggs today! Of the young girls, the two Barred Rocks are molting, so nothing from them now, and the four RI Reds are starting to slow down. But the older Amerucana crosses are starting to come back into production - we got one green and two pinkish-brown eggs today. I wonder - will I wake up to rain or snow tomorrow?