hallelujah, rain!

I'll admit, I was really starting to feel like it was never, ever going to rain again. Like, ever. Due to the lack of rain, its been a huge battle trying to keep the gardens at work and around the store hydrated. Now I'm one to love a nice sunny day, but it has been endlessly sunny. Hot, humid, relentlessly sunny. But thank goodness, it finally rained last week! It was a nasty storm actually, came out of nowhere with eighty mile per hour winds.Very exciting. I love a good storm. I remember when we were kids, if there was ever a severe thunderstorm or even a whisper that it might be tornado weather, my mom would haul all of us down into the cellar.  She'd be in a total panic and my dad would be laughing, standing on the porch with his video camera ready to document. We had another storm super early this morning, I woke to thunder before six a.m. Jason and I jumped on the porch to scope things out and it seemed tree's were down left and right in our neighborhood. My poor neighbor across the street had a tree fall onto her car. yikes.

I suppose Mother Nature likes to constantly remind us of her presence.

The animals all seemed spooked when I checked on them this morning, but after a little rainbow chard snack, they seemed happy and calm again.

This is Christophine, our sweet donkey. She has the softest nose ever and she likes to hee-haw at you non-stop if you are nearby weeding. I think she knows that all the yummy weeds are going to be her lunch later, but I'll admit she is the perfect compost bin.

I'm hoping this weekend I get the chance to work on my own garden for a bit.  I started some new hanging baskets for our porch and I desperately still want to sew a cute cushion for our porch swing. We moved into our house recently, so I am still getting settled and in nesting mode. I have a vision for a funky patterned fabric. I will go shopping with this impossible thing I have envisioned in my mind and I will search and search with no luck. Sometimes you just need to create it yourself. Here is a fun tutorial on making your own fabric patterns using pastel dye sticks. Or you can stencil the fabric, like here. I am leaning towards the latter. If I'm ambitious enough soon to finish the project, I'll post some before and afters.

In the meantime, here are some fabulous porch swings I would kill for.

There's nothing I love more than sitting on the porch with some sun tea in the Summertime. Especially if I had a porch swing this dreamy.

xoxo time for bed