These photos perfectly illustrate the way my week has gone:

On the left is a butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii) that I bought last fall for about $15.

I carefully amended our crummy soil and tucked the little plant lovingly into the ground.  I hovered over it, cheered when it survived the winter, worried when it died back to the ground in the spring, and cheered all over again when it put out a few tiny sprigs of new growth.  During this whole hot drought-ridden summer, I’ve been hand-carrying water to it.  It’s about a foot tall.

On the right is… you guessed it:  another butterfly bush.  It apparently started itself from some wayward seed carried by wind or birds or whatever.  It’s growing in bare gravel that was dug up last spring, so it’s at least a year younger than the plant I bought.  It’s never been fussed over (in fact I didn’t even notice it until it started to bloom) and it hasn’t received a single drop of water that didn’t fall from the sky.  Did I mention we’re having a drought?

But the intrepid new butterfly bush is three feet tall and growing like stink.  Go figure.

That’s the kind of week it’s been:  Our well is beginning to show the stress of the drought and we’re not sure if it will supply enough water to get us through the rest of the summer.  We’ve been wrestling with well drillers and water consultants AGAIN (I was really hoping we were done with that for a few decades), and we still don’t have a decision or quote or timeline.  Hubby is being his usual laid-back self, but I’m finding it immensely stressful and time-consuming.

Still, though, things could be worse:  I was sitting outside enjoying a cup of tea one morning and listening to the pounding of hammers over at the neighbours’ place when I heard *bang* *bang* *bang* *bang* *bang* OW, SHIT-F*&$#$F*#@B&$!!!

After my wince and (I’m ashamed to admit) instinctive snicker, I waited worriedly for a car to rush past on the way to the emergency room; but a few minutes later I was relieved to hear laughter and jovial teasing.  I’m glad nobody got seriously hurt, but I bet their week was a whole lot worse than mine.

So… no complaints.  We still have water (so far).  I’m still clinging to sanity (or to be precise, I can still fake sanity convincingly).

And hey, I got two butterfly bushes for the price of one!

How’s your week going?

Book 14 update:  The water fiasco ate up a bunch of my writing time this week, but I still made it to Chapter 9.  Onward!