Rain! And Cool!

We went over to Murphy's Blueberry Farm this morning to do our weekly pickin'. Unlike last week when it was already nearing 80 degrees when we pulled in at 8:30 AM, it was a cool 72 degrees with a lightly overcast sky. Terry and I were picking for nearly an hour when a light drizzle started but it felt good and didn't seem threatening. Twenty or thirty minutes later, however, there was a rumble of thunder in the distance that continued to get louder and louder. That was threatening! So we (and everyone else in the field) called it a day. In little better than an hour and a quarter we had gathered 5 1/4 pounds of blueberries.

As we checked out the rain began in earnest and it rained all the way back through Mansfield but when we turned south off Route 6 the rain diminished considerably so there was just a light drizzle falling when we got home. Since then, the temperature rose to just over 80 degrees and then fell to 69 degrees as a line of T-storms marking a cold front moved through. We did get rain from that but not in gully-washing proportions; more a gentle, soaking rain that will do the lawn and garden some good.

After lunch, as he front approached and the temperatures outside began to fall, I went to work turning those 5+ pounds of berries into seven pints of blueberry jam. We've now got a dozen jars of strawberry jam and 14 jars of blueberry in the larder. That should last us for a good while. If we do go berry picking again--and why not? It's fun!--we'll freeze what we gather and use them for muffins, pancakes and buckle.

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Strange to watch the windmills rotate so much and so frequently as the front approached and passed. First the winds came from the west, then out of the north and then--as the front moved on--from the south.

Right now, we're just pleased to be getting some much needed relief from the hot, dry weather we've had for the past few weeks.

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When we came home, I noticed one of the flower pots that was sitting on the retaining wall had, well, disappeared. This is a big sucker that holds several pounds of potting soil and it could not have just blown away. I found it on the ground beneath the utility trailer at the base of the retaining wall. Something had knocked it off severely denting a drain spout in the process. Another, larger flower pot had been tipped over. Terry's vote has gone to raccoons while I'm partial to a large black bear.