A rough weekend

"April is the cruelest month" but so far, May has shown a little bit of cruelty in our part of the world.  How, you ask?  Let us count the ways...

1) The cruelest cut may be the premature death of nearly all of Joe's tomato seedlings.  He raised them all from seeds, loving and coaxing them into garden-ready seedlings.  And now they're gone.   Root rot, he thinks, is the culprit.  He's feeling culpable, but really, how could he have predicted 20 inches of rain in two weeks?  It's very sad.  He does have other tomato children that he's sent out into the world with other gardeners, so that's some solace.  And we do have three precious remaining plants left, so we've put Chloe out to guard them night and day.  And replaced the missing plants with store-bought ones.  Although I'm not sure what to do about the tomato-sized hole in Joe's heart.

2) We had 4 or 5 bluebird chicks in our bluebird house, just about ready to fledge.  And then we had a few cold, rainy days and didn't see or hear any more from our chicks.  We assumed they had fledged, but Joe checked the nest yesterday and found them dead.  We thought maybe House Sparrows, because they can kills bluebird chicks, nasty creatures, but a little bit of research suggests hypothermia.  Poor things.  And poor Joe, since he had to do the clean up.  You don't want the details, trust me.

3) As bad as all of that is - here's the real tragedy.  Joe and I had a bonfire Saturday night to get rid of our stick pile. I wore flip flops, and while you might think the cautionary tale here is to not wear open-toed shoes around burning embers, you'd be wrong. (Probably still isn't a good idea).  No, all seemed fine, until last night when I woke up to my feet on fire.  Not from burning embers, but from SEVENTEEN mosquito bites on my feet.  That's just below the ankles.  As I lay there in agony, I remembered all the times I had grumbled while applying hydrocortisone cream to Calla's mosquito bites in the middle of the night.  Please, who wakes up because of mosquito bites?  Now I know, and deeply regret my grumbles.  But not as much as I regret wearing flip flops Saturday night.

Other than those tragedies, we're enjoying the start of summer.  We're in the midst of strawberry season here, which makes all rough patches a little sweeter.  I still have jam from last summer, so my projects are freezer-focused.  I'm bound and determined to have strawberry sauce for our ice cream next January. 

So, OK.  Minor - relatively speaking - tragedies aside, all is well here.  The girls are loving the berries and outside play and we may even get into the pool this coming weekend.  And if we do, we'll probably have some pictures to share later.