Monday, June 5, 2023

Drought. And a damned Plantar Wart.

 Blessings darlings!

I have a little time to blog today, since I'm off my feet - well, off one of my feet - due to a plantar wart that is making it very painful to walk.   It's a shock how it went from Nothing to Can't Walk without PAIN in under 7 days!  Urgent Care couldn't treat it (no liquid nitrogen), and getting an appointment with either my doctor or my husband's dermatologist (where I'd be a low-priority 'new patient') can take forEVER.  So I'm doing the OTC treatment the Doc in the Box and I discussed and am off work (where I'm on my feet getting 12000+ steps in a day) today but can't be very useful at home.  Doc in the Box gave me a note for 3 days off of work, but I'm hoping to be able to work tomorrow.  The first three hours back at work will pay for the OTC stuff.  Then I'll need to cover whatever the copay turns out to be - and there WILL be one, tho' I went to the Urgent Care that is part of my plan. 

So I shouldn't go out and water the garden, since doing that hurts.  BUT - we have drought conditions.  So the garden, especially the stuff in pots on the patio, need water.  OTOH, I don't have very much water available for the plants, since the plumbers who replaced the water pump took the hose spigot off the pump head.  All the rest of the water around the house goes thru' the water softener.  I've been going to a friend's house and filling 2.5 gallon jugs every few days and bringing them home to water with.

I could walk over to the cattle barn since that water isn't softened and Chris has okayed it to fill jugs (I sure don't have hoses that are that long, even if they were all attached into one MegaHose) but that, too, is more steps.

It's 'only' a moderate drought here at this time.  My lawn is a mid-August dead brown in color.  The clay soil is dry for inches down, and unwilling to give any of that moisture to plants.  The blueberry bush I planted two years ago seems to have died from it.  IF we get the rain forecast for Sunday and Monday (and we have less than a 50% chance of rain those days) they predict a total of maybe 0.1 inches.  What we need is an average of 0.5 inches a week.

The landlord is going to talk to his plumber next week about connecting the outdoor taps ON the house in a way that routes around the water softener.  He didn't mention anything about my request to add a rain barrel splitter to one of the downspouts, so I can save water when ever it DOES rain.    

This being Monday, I suppose I should do some offerings to the watery Moon for some rain, but weather patterns and global warming are a bit much for a simple one-off working as I know you know.

If you're in the US and want to see if your area is doing okay on rain, check out the Drought Monitor site https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/  It will also give you info on row crops being affected, and grazing/haying area effects.

Frondly,  Fern


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