16 days without rain. It doesn’t sound like a long period, but when you calculate in only 60mm of rain since December and no snow this year, you come to the state we’re in right now. The soil is as dry as a bone. The cold winds that were blowing over the past couple of weeks didn’t help at all, and they made the soil even drier. Nothing is alive right now. The grass is completely dry, trees haven’t started forming buds yet, and no fresh plants are coming out right now. There’s no rain visible in the next 15 days, so I guess this will be the first year I will actually have to start watering the garden in March.

I decided to collect the suckers and use them as a “Srećko free” fence on the new yard beds we’ll be making, so I have to get all the suckers to the upper yard. Of course, I forgot to bring the ropes and like always the clothes are saving me. One part of the suckers were brought home wrapped in my work jacket. I still need to bring home the rest of them, but since the orchard is downhill, I can only bring one bunch a day, bringing everything at once would be too hard. 

The situation is the garden is dry and leafy. I honestly can’t remember if there was a year with so many dry leaves still present in March. Usually, the rain and snow decompose the leaves, and by the time we start planting and sowing, there are not many leaves left in the garden. This year everything is covered in leaves. 

Fava beans, which I’ve sown in February, are still under the ground and not showing any signs of wanting to grow. The soil is just too dry. Now that the days are getting warmer I will start watering the beds. There’s no point in waiting for the rain until April.

The cold weather we had during the past couple of weeks finished off my cabbages. They were holding well until the end of February. Now they are completely dry, and the only thing I can do with them is to throw them into the compost box. 

Also, again this year, something ate my collard greens. Last year the kale simply disappeared, and this year it was the collard. Something bites off the tops leaving only the stem which is too old to grow any leaves. Out of all of the plants, they left me only one. At first, I thought it was a roe deer, but roe deer would eat kale and cabbages too, and they weren’t touched. Now I suspect crows, blackbirds, or doves. They are in the garden all the time, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they thought my collard was a good side dish. Or maybe it as a rabbit, but I don’t know how it would enter the garden. Anyway, the collard is gone. 

The only good thing about this dry period is that Srećko is not getting so muddy while he digs around the garden, and we both enjoy this fact.