When a project I have started takes a lot longer to complete than I had anticipated, I am reminded of an old movie I once saw about the artist Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The Pope or some high ranking member of the church comes into the picture after the artist had been working on the fresco for far to long and exclaims: “Michelangelo, when will you make an end!” to which the artist replies, “When I am finished!” or something to that effect.

The ceiling did get painted and the rest, as they say, is history.

I felt much the same this year as the wet mountainous spring kept me from first getting my potatoes planted when I wanted to and then postponing the planting of my corn and beans until the first weekend of June. The good news is that everything is in the ground and growing by leaps and bounds due to the favorable weather we have experienced the past several weeks. A little rain followed by some 70 degree days does a lot for those small seeds: they germinate quickly and then grow really fast, actually catching up to those planted weeks earlier while the ground was still a bit cooler.

At least that has been my experience.

Gardening is something that I look forward to each year but as I get older, calendar-wise, the job does seem to get a little harder every year. This year, after hauling off last years stems and stocks (to wet to burn fully) I mowed down the weeds, tilled and raked then tilled and raked again. Then, after church on one Sunday, I tilled again, set up the row stakes and string, made my furrows, sowed the seed and covered them with peat and composted manure. This 30 row planting was a marathon session that took me almost 6 1/2 hours and several days to regain the energy I spent that afternoon.

Don’t get me wrong—I am glad to still have the energy to expend however it ends up getting spent. It is just that it takes longer to get back to normal than it did last year. In a perfect world I could have broken the six hours into several sessions but with our weather’s irregularity I just needed to get it done while the ground was still dry enough to work in.

It has been two or three weeks since the above took place and we are now hoping for a little moisture since the soil is drying out because of all these beautiful days we have had.

I had this thought while driving home from work tonight: the weather doesn’t really care what we care or what we wish for—it is what it is. It can’t really hear our thoughts and prayers and give us that perfect day because we are getting married outside or having people over for a cook out. If you get the perfect day, be thankful—but if you don’t, remember it is just the other side of the same coin. Sometimes you get heads and sometimes it is tails all the way.

I guess that is why they say: make hay while the sun shines.

Rainy or not—that’s the end of another not so long ride.