A Break in the Clouds

Finally a sunny day -- a respite from the four days of rain. The wet weather was great for the new crops and trees in the ground, but bad for my own personal disposition. "Rainy days & Mondays always get me down," as Karen Carpenter sang. But to have rain on a Monday was just too much!

Lots to report from the last week:
Planted 10 white oaks, 10 hackberry, 5 apple, and 2 cherry trees planted.

The Mission Garden at church is half planted; we'll wait until the second week of May to plant the beans, cukes, etc. This is the second year for the 30' x 60' garden project - - we give the produce to local and needy families as part of our church's evangelism mission. We learned a LOT last year (don't grow gourds in a food garden, you can only give away so many eggplant, brussel sprouts are not a local favorite, etc) and hope to incorporate new and better ideas this year.

As evidenced by the following photos, natural light is the best for capturing DD's innocence:

We have some new "wildlife" at Gracious Acres.
A red-headed woodpecker (what other kind, is there, right?):
And Iowa's state bird, the goldfinch:

Oh, and I chopped my hair off in the bathroom this morning . . . was having another bad hair day and the whole "grow it out and it might look like Julia Louis Dreyfus" thing was NOT working for me, so add "bathroom hairdresser" to my long list of titles. It's a nice length for the summer, too. It's just hair, right, it'll grow back!