Rain, rain, go away 

And then she said “Stick it where the sun doesn’t shine!” and I thought “the Midwest?” 

The 12 months ending in April 2019 were the wettest year-long period in U.S. records going back as far as 1895, according to the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. The old record for any 12-month period was set from April 2015 to March 2016. 

So if you feel like it has been raining forever, you are not far off. I take full responsibility for the statistics above. It is all my fault. 

I painted the porch. Clearly, I was asking for it. 

The Weather Channel, which I am pretty sure just invents the weather forecast based on a coin toss at headquarters, predicted a sunny day. I was a fool to trust them. 

I painted our massive wrap around porch and some 999 balusters (only a slight exaggeration) with oil based paint. Almost immediately rain clouds rolled in and soon my wet paint became wetter paint. 

Mow

On the upside, the lakes should be nice and high this year. On the downside, it’s so darn wet the grass is also high. As in knee high. 

When we can finally mow, it takes a tractor to not get stuck and even a finish mower leaves clumps that leave the yard more Bush Hogged than mowed. 

I’m pretending that clumps of grass are in this year. I can push them into little mounds and call it topiary maybe? 

The sound of the rain on the roof is soothing, at the start. Somewhere around day 9,799 of captivity, it is akin to water torture. 

Here we farm mud, mainly, and it’s a bumper crop this year. Forget footprints in the sand. We leave Muck Boot tracks in the mud. 

John Ruskin has famously (and foolishly) said: “Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing … there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.” 

Reading this I feel certain that John Ruskin has never tried to convince a dog that she should do her business outside in a monsoon. He probably also never worried that livestock would need water wings to make it to pasture. 

Working in rain

Ruskin probably never worked in an industry that needs the sun to shine just every once in a while in order to make a living. 

Farming, tourism and so many other industries are struggling in this endless sea of rain. I suppose if you are selling rain gear or ark supplies things are looking up though? 

Here on the home place, Ohio has done it’s very best to be wetter than Seattle this year. If we were looking for a new state motto, I feel like that one is not it. 

On the upside, it only rained twice this spring. Once for 35 days and once for 40. 

All I can say is I hope that when we finally experience summer this year, it happens on a weekend. Last year summer fell on a weekday afternoon. We could have missed the whole thing.