We live on a desert mountain. The excitement for this month comes in the form of almost 3 inches of rain.  For those of you who live in places like Oregon, that probably doesn’t sound too impressive.  To us desert dwellers, who have seen less than 2 inches of rain in the previous six months, it is a lot of water!

We had 5 straight days of rain starting last week and by Tuesday afternoon here is what our back yard looked like. I am just glad that everything planted in containers above ground. Any thing here would have surely washed away.

Please note that a week ago all you would see is a picture of dry, cracked earth and a bunch of brown weeks. And now there is running water!

Mixed reviews on the rain.  The good news is we haven’t had to water in 6 days. The cucumbers and melon are very happy and the rain has washed away a lot of the beets aphid infestation. The less good news is that we, the gardeners. are feeling distinctly water-logged, achy and creaky.  The only bad news (an it isn’t that bad)  is that the tomato plants seem to hate the rain; the leaves are turning yellow, fungus is growing like mad and the fruit is very slow to turn red. Please note, that it is hard to feed and treat the plants for fungus in the rain!  At the very least it is a waste since everything just washes away.

The other garden thing of note are my Dahlias – finally some big ones; I had all but despaired. And then all of sudden they are! I think they like the rain!

Supposed to have a couple of sunny dry days and then the rain starts up again over the weekend. . . You never know!

I may complain about my bones, but truthfully, the rain is one of the best things about living in Prescott. The rain keeps the air fresh and cool; never any smog!

So here it is, one more week in the saga of Mother Nature vs the Coté garden. So far we are holding our own!