Whether weather

Weather has been the biggest character in my story in recent weeks, and because I have so much I want or need to do outside. This isn’t the first time we’ve had weeks of more or less daily rain, and it won’t be the last, of course. What makes this year so different is that the bad weather is preventing me from doing things I want to do. Weather may well be a recurring character in my story for a some time yet.

had a nice, relaxed day yesterday. It was sunny, with pleasant temperatures, and without even a drop of rain. I thought about doing some work outside, but, I didn’t. And I was okay with having a day off everything.

Later, I had a reason for regret: “Threat of thunderstorms and tornados in North Island, snow in the south”, Stuff reported. That meant my Sunday could be a washout—perhaps literally—and none of what I planned, or deferred from today, was likely to be possible. Still, I was okay with that, too. As I always say, because it’s always true, it’s not like I don’t have plenty of inside stuff to work on.

That evening, I went out to check my tomatoes, something I haven’t been able to do very often lately because of all the rainstorms. They’re doing really well. I planted the tiny plants five weeks ago today, and since then they’re grown and bushed out, and there are blossoms everywhere (photo up top). That’s very promising. I still have more stuff to plant, but that’s also been delayed by all the bad the weather. Fortunately, they’re the sort of things (like salad stuff, for example) that I’d normally do successive plantings of, anyway, so the delay isn’t really much of any issue.

As it happens, I slept late today, and I’ve done very little. I’m still feeling tired, it turns out, and the grey, rainy day isn’t helping make me feel at all peppy.

Still, I did a little research in my down time and found a place where I can get the storage bins for my laundry area for a bit less that I paid for the first ones, plus the shop also has a couple other things I’d like to get to further my (inside…) organisation projects. That’s the basic plan I have for tomorrow, with maybe some more added onto it if I’m feeling perky enough.

It would’ve been nice to be able to do whatever I wanted today, but that’s not always the way things go. Weather impacts my projects a lot these days, but so does how I’m feeling (because all my outside work, and much of my inside work, is physical labour of one sort or another).

Still, “what I can, when I can,” and all that. Each day I find things to do, no matter how small, that push things forward, no matter how little. It’s the motion that matters, not the speed. The weather may delay me or slow me down, but it can’t stop everything completely.

My mother used to say (quoting her school days’ elocution lessons), “Whether it rains, or whether it snows, we shall have weather, whether or no.” I’ve learned that whether weather matters some days or not, progress can still happen. My tomato plants back me up on that.