All this rain is really putting a damper on my outside projects.  Oh, well, we should be used to it here in the north east.  I guess I’ll go out and try to find 2 discounted hanging baskets to add to a bird feeder pole to finish off a corner near out backyard gate.

We haven’t had to put the air conditioner in yet.  We’ve had a nice cool spring. We only have the one window air conditioner that we put in one bedroom but it makes the upstairs pretty cool in the summer.  Luckily, we have a door that shuts the upstairs off from the downstairs so it does a pretty efficient job of keeping us cool at night.  We keep the cats downstairs just by keeping the door shut.  We used to wake up with a cat across our faces and get fuzz in our eyes so we started shutting the door, though I miss them and will occasionally let them up when it gets too hot downstairs.  We keep fans going in most of the downstair rooms.  I’ve loved this cool weather even if it means more rain.

The staining of the deck and fence is on hold.  We need to get a stretch of good, rainless weather to get to that.  Maybe it will come next week.

I got one drip irrigation system set up for my front porch hanging baskets.  Those baskets are under a roof so they get no rain at all.  I ordered 1/2-inch black rolled poly tubing as a trunk line for the backyard potted plants as  there are too many to use just spaghetti line.  Last year the end drippers barely put out any water using all spaghetti line.  When I got the black tubing I was excited to put it together only to find out there are 2 sizes of the 1/2 tubing,  .700 (which I needed to fit all the couplers and corners I bought) and one that is .620  poly tubing.  I shoved the end of the tubing into a coupler and it slid right in and right out.  That isn’t going to hold under pressure!  I thought, “they sent me the wrong stuff!”

I checked. I made a mistake and ordered the .620 so I had to reorder and it should get here next week.  Bummer.  I called just about everywhere around town and nobody even knew what it was.  It doesn’t pay to return it because the shipping for it is more than what the tubing cost.  Maybe there will be a project down the line that I can use the tubing for.  More likely it will be one more thing to take up space on our basement shelving.

Luckily, I haven’t had to water the back-yard potted plants because of all the rain so the delay in the drip system hasn’t been critical.  They are out in the open.  But once the rains stops they would wilt in a day or two in the sun without water.  The wonderful part of the drip line on a timer is you can leave for days at a time and not have to have anyone water your plants.  Plus I just plain forget to water when I am home and kill a lot of plants.