Rain gauges don't lie

The rain from the massive cold front started Friday around 10 p.m. and lasted until noon today. That's 38 hours of rain. While it may have been a drizzle at times, I never saw that it had stopped raining. Yet, both my rain gauges show only 1/3 inch of rain. I never knew it could rain so long yet so little.

My grass seed and freshly prepared garden areas needed the rain badly, but there's good news. The 300 pounds of grass seed I planted 18 days ago is starting to emerge in spots.

The warmer weather expected this week should help push the shoots on up.

When I complain about mowing in August, remind me how badly I wanted to see the grass in March.

A terrible waste

Every time I pass the sawed-up cherry logs stacked by our driveway, the rich red wood calls to me. I think about all the beautiful furniture that could have been made from this tree.

The tree toppled in a winter windstorm, and my only option was to saw it up. Hiring a truck to transport a single log is cost prohibitive.

I'll season the wood and reserve it for fires on special occasions.

A good rain is in order

Even though January and February had frequent rains, we are more than 1 inch behind on rainfall for the year. That should be fixed by the time the weekend is over. We are in for three full days of soaking rain.

It comes at a good time. The grass seed I planted two weeks ago needs a boost. The garden plots have all been plowed and could use a good soaking.

I'm trying to find aluminum sulphate to distribute over the blueberry patch, or, should I say, where the blueberry patch is going to be.

It's a good feeling to have your land reading for planting.

The reason it's called Deerfield

Driving on Deerfield this afternoon, I glanced to my right to see a full-size deer flying through the air toward my truck. The grown doe hit the top of my right front fender, bounced off and landed in the grassy shoulder. When I got out of the truck the deer began pulling itself with its two front legs into the woods. I'm sure it's back was broken.

I was safely within the 25 MPH speed limit on Deerfield, but it wouldn't have mattered what speed I was going. The deer T-boned me.

We love to see the deer grazing in Deerfield. We have seen as many as seven in a neighbor's apple orchard. We sometimes see them from our kitchen window.

Buzzards and turkey vultures will start circling the woods in Deerfield soon. I'll get the truck fixed and life will go on -- minus one beautiful creature.

Toolbox memories

I logged several hours in the tractor seat today preparing the new ground for planting. One of the minor improvements I made to my John Deere was attaching a small plastic toolbox on the right rear fender to hold miscellaneous tools, spare parts and sundry. It keeps me from having to go to the garage every time I need a tool or a nut and bolt.

The toolbox brings to mind the magic one on my grandfather's Ford 8N tractor. The metal box rested underneath the cowling and very close to the engine block. The only things I can remember being in the toolbox were some rusted bolts, an adjustable wrench, a pair of pliers and some baling wire. It seemed much of the tractor was held together with baling wire.

What made the toolbox special, however, is the way it warmed our lunch in the field. My grandmother would take leftovers (ham and biscuit, tenderloin and biscuit, ham and cornbread) and wrap them in waxed paper or a brown paper sack. Aluminum foil had not made it to the Vawter farm in West Tennessee yet. My grandfather would stuff the goodies in the toolbox and take off for the field. After strategically placing two fruit jars full of ice underneath a shade tree, the day of plowing would begin. I would hop on and off the tractor, sometimes untangling roots from the turning plow or chasing baby rabbits along the fence row. The scrumptious smells coming from the toolbox were never far from my nose.

My grandfather would glance up at the sun to make sure it was noon and we would proceed to the shade where the feast would begin. A ham and biscuit cooked for five hours in a tractor toolbox has no epicurean equal. Ice water from a fruit jar on a 90-degree day is the nectar of gods. There's no better luncheon companion than a grandfather for a 10-year old boy who has trouble talking.

Winter's damage

Today's 75-degree day was spent cleaning up ice and wind damage in the woods around the house. My neighbor and I felled about a dozen trees that were either dead or that had fallen and gotten hung up in the branches of other trees. When I pulled out a sassafras stump with my tractor, it smelled like I had knocked over a root beer stand. I brought part of the stump in to the back porch so the dogs could sniff it.

I roughed out on graph paper some possible planting scenarios for blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, muscadines and concord grapes. My books say these need to be in the ground by March 15. Just like the newspaper business, another deadline.

Where the wild garlic grows

All this time you probably thought that the weed that comes up in your yard in late winter is the mundane wild onion. Not so, says the UT Agriculture Extension Service. In this part of the country it's actually wild garlic.

The lawn maintenance seminar that my neighbor and I attended a week ago had several bits of information like this. My neighbor said that his yard could be a laboratory for weed sciences since it contains every weed the instructor displayed.

Personally, I would love to have some more weeds in my yard in place of the mud. My place is so shady that it's hard to get anything started. I'm not looking for a pristine carpet of grass, just something underfoot so the dogs won't get muddy when they go out.

The grass seed I sowed should start sprouting in the next week or so. If not, does anyone know where you can buy weed seed?