Rain?

I didn’t even need an alarm clock today because the rain was beating so hard on the roof of my trailer that I woke up promptly at seven. I spent the next fifteen minutes in bed not wanting to deal with having to go outside but luckily by seven thirty the rain had completely stopped.

I guess when they say 100% chance of rain they don’t mean that it will rain 100% of the day because after that initial downpour we had no rain the rest of the day. Everyone was disappointed but in the end, the lack of rain did give us a wider spectrum of jobs to choose from. In the morning I worked in the greenhouse again and then spent the rest of the morning packing CSA boxes in the shop. After lunch I pruned roses for a few hours. I’ve been wondering if any psychologists make their clients prune because it truly is a very therapeutic ordeal. Since I’ve always had trouble making decisions it was great for me because pretty much all you do in pruning is make decisions right and left. It’s a really fun job because every plant is so different that for each rose you have to look at it and imagine its individual skeleton. This part is also totally exhausting, after a few hours of pruning I can really feel that my brain is fuzzy and tired.

I think when people imagine farming they often envision mostly manual work but I feel my brain being worked in so many directions here that I actually feel more exhausted than I did on most school days. All day today I used my brain a lot. First I spent the morning translating between Chica and Rebecca constantly and then I spent a long time trying to explain Spanish grammar to Rebecca as we packed. Then for lack of a pen, I had to do a lot of mental math to count boxes and vegetables. As I was doing the work in my head I was also thinking how the last time I had to do serious mental math was probably in fourth or fifth grade. It's so weird how in our education system you really focus so much on this in lower school but once you enter middle and high school it all goes out the window and kids all of a sudden forget how to do anything without their calculator. And I'll readily admit, I totally am one of those kids, I love my graphing calculator! Maybe I'll invest in a calculator watch one of these days just to up the geek factor.