April Showers

April has always been the pivotal Spring month where I've lived, warming up and seeing everything start to waken. The saying "April showers bring May flowers" is always in my head when it rains.

It's certainly been raining a lot here in St. Louis lately -- we've gotten over 3" (8cm) over the last few days. Incidentally, that tub is a recent garage sale find. I was thinking of using it for a small water feature -- I may want to move it into place now and just let the rain fill it up.

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I'm not complaining -- except for some leaks in the basement -- I'm glad to get the rain, as I fear we'll have another very dry summer.

I haven't had to water seedlings for quite a while:

The pond sure is full:

Lots of space for the tadpoles -- those toads have been busy!

Speaking of the pond, it's starting to look good again:

I'm talking about the way the plants make it look so much better -- it's not the water itself that's looking good. In fact the water quality is quite poor again, very muddy.

All of this rainfall has started some of the bamboo shooting:

It looks like we've replaced the rain with cold weather, so I probably won't see more bamboo shoots emerge until it warms back up. A frost is expected tonight, and I saw a few snowflakes this morning.

The good news is it looks like there's no more rain in the forecast until Tuesday, which gives all of the plants a chance to drink some of this up.

Come on May flowers!

(If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring? Pilgrims of course!)

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