Looking Out My Window Again

It's late springtime in South Mississippi, so we've got the sort of weather you'd expect:  rain, rain, and more rain.  That, of course, means that my backyard is flooding.  No surprise.  It always does that.  The ground is so wet, in fact, that I can see more than a dozen crawfish castles from my desk window.  What is a crawfish castle?  It's a dirt mound that looks like this (borrowing a picture from online because I can't be bothered to go outside in the rain to take one myself):

And there are fresh fire ant mounds, too--as I understand it, they build underground generally and make aboveground mounds when they need to cool the nest.  Mounds pop up all over the yard this time of year.  That's when I miss my guinea fowl the most; they were brilliant at keeping fire ants at bay.  The guineas would watch the mounds until they got just-so-high, then they'd feast on the insects, and roll in the dust from the mound as a coup de gras.  Clever guineas.

The rain is keeping me from pursing work outside.  There's so much to be done.  Oh well, a little at a time.  The good news is that seeds have been sprouting in my old container garden.  Although it's just a week since I planted them, my wax beans sprouts have already shot up more than 6 inches.  And the radishes!  Oh my, I didn't think they'd germinate so I dumped a whole seed packet in the pot, and it looks like every single seed has sprouted.  I'll have to do some serious thinning there.

The volunteer tomatoes in the new garden area are still coming up.  Seems like every time I go to the garden, I find another new plant.  I'm just letting them grow where they will, and I've put tomato cages wherever I could.  But I've run out of cages and there are more plants coming.  The tomato plants seem mostly quite strong and healthy.  The mini-tomatoes are a bit weak but there are tomatoes growing on their thin little stems.  The romas seem to be fierce and have lots of fruit on the way.  (Yes, tomatoes are fruit rather than vegetables.)  I don't know what variety the other plants are.  We'll just have to wait and see.

I haven't seen anything going on with the corn and sunflower seeds but, as I mentioned earlier, I strongly suspect that they've been eaten (most probably by some busy little squirrels).  I'll try planting again.  And I hope to make some more mounds--the rain is softening the ground nicely so maybe that will make it easier to chop up the soil. 

There's so much more I want to do but I need supplies and I need to do a lot more clearing.  Still, progress is on the horizon.

It's a lively time of year.
Life is good.