{"id":49133,"date":"2013-11-30T14:01:59","date_gmt":"2013-11-30T18:01:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=49133"},"modified":"2013-11-30T14:01:59","modified_gmt":"2013-11-30T18:01:59","slug":"giving-thanks-for-rain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=49133","title":{"rendered":"giving thanks for rain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><big>a very polite and well-timed rain arrived after the Thanksgiving holiday, sometime after midnight.<br \/>\nOn Wednesday I brought in chairs that summered in the garden for holiday duty.<\/p>\n<p><center><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i52.photobucket.com\/albums\/g23\/botanizeme\/nov2013\/P1010728.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\" photo P1010728.jpg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The new rain gutters gurgled musically as they efficiently carried rain away from the 100-year-old foundations, a happy ending to the month-long gutter ordeal.<br \/>\n(Marty fell off the roof, ass over tea kettle, but amazingly emerged with only muscle soreness for a couple weeks.  Thank you, gods of calamity!)<br \/>\nListening to the orchestral rhapsody of rain in the gutters, on corrugated roofs, on pavement, kept me busy most of Friday morning.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i52.photobucket.com\/albums\/g23\/botanizeme\/nov2013\/P1010787.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\" photo P1010787.jpg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I was awake at 5 a.m. today, anticipating the early morning patrol after the rain.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i52.photobucket.com\/albums\/g23\/botanizeme\/nov2013\/P1010781.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\" photo P1010781.jpg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Prowling the garden to see what the rain brought, I found newly sprouted seedlings of Erodium pelargoniflorum.  Rain makes fast work of germination.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i52.photobucket.com\/albums\/g23\/botanizeme\/nov2013\/P1010780.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\" photo P1010780.jpg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>And then I remembered I shook the seed pods of the South African bulb Albuca maxima in this area of the front gravel garden and searched for signs of germination.<br \/>\nThese tiny strands may just be baby albucas. <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i52.photobucket.com\/albums\/g23\/botanizeme\/may%202011\/52evening058.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Photobucket\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In bloom it resembles a 5-foot snowdrop.  <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i52.photobucket.com\/albums\/g23\/botanizeme\/nov2013\/P1010777.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\" photo P1010777.jpg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A couple of leaves of nearby Agave &#8216;Jaws&#8217; provide support when it blooms.   Rain-soaked agave leaves unfurl quickly, leaving ghostly imprint patterns.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i52.photobucket.com\/albums\/g23\/botanizeme\/nov2013\/P1010774.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\" photo P1010774.jpg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>What the skies looked like late Friday afternoon over the back garden.  Could a day be any more perfect?<br \/>\nWishing you perfection this holiday weekend.  And it doesn&#8217;t even have to be a whole day.  Moments count.<\/p>\n<p><\/big><\/p>\n<p><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>a very polite and well-timed rain arrived after the Thanksgiving holiday, sometime after midnight. On Wednesday I brought in chairs that summered in the garden for holiday duty. The new rain gutters gurgled musically as they efficiently carried rain away &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=49133\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[2807,1082],"tags":[1701,1063,589,3204,3203,3202],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paNJ2E-cMt","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49133"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49133"}],"version-history":[{"count":73,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49311,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49133\/revisions\/49311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}