Everything is just a bit.....off.

This has been a really "off" year; it seems that everything is falling under the one step forward two steps back rule.

We've had so much rain that our summer veggie garden became a battle ground of me against pests and the poor plants barely produced enough for our family to consume. And now my fall garden is getting drenched again. This time, I'm ready for the bug battle and am armed with some stronger weapons. This was not the year to try to go completely organic.

We've had a summer in which one after the other, all of our yard equipment has either perished or required expensive surgery to recover. First the riding mower went, but that was okay because we had two push mowers and two strong sons to run them. When one of the push mowers then perished from old age, we relied on those two sons and the remaining mower....until two weeks ago when that one decided to retire as well.

And, three weed whackers also decided to give up the ghost - one after the other. Our yard has almost taken back its pre-us look...it doesn't take long for nature to re-claim its property.

We've been lucky though in at least one area; the hundreds of acres of potato fields that surround us are usually stripped of their cover crop mid August but this year, it all still stands. Its growth was stunted from the rains this year and it never reached its usual 7 plus feet normal height, but it kept the field mice and snakes out of the property which is a good thing.

I'm pretty sure the rains that destroyed millions of dollars of potatoes this past spring are the reason the cover crop still stands. The farmers plant in a way that none of them reaches harvesting point at the same time and the market isn't flooded so it appears they have rotated their planting schedule to help some of those harder hit farmers get an earlier harvest. Since our farmer was one of the lucky ones who was already harvesting when the 7 days of rain hit, he didn't lose much of his crop.

That works for us as well. Once those fields come down, all the critters who've hidden from the summer heat in them come out to play....in our yard. And with our issues with lawn tools this summer, they would absolutely love our overgrown ditches and knee high grassy yard....

I'm off to the repair shop to pick up our riding mower and if I'm lucky, the rain will hold off long enough for me to make a start on reclaiming my yard....wish me luck.