Surely, it’s started raining again by now.
If not, we really need to raise preacher pay or whatever else it takes to get some clouds overhead and rain going again.
The reason I’m not sure of the current rain situation: these monthly musings are prepared a few weeks in advance. So, at the time of this writing, we have not had a good rain at my house in about two months. Two showers passed over and spritzed us recently, but no soaking rains since the middle of July.
The yard is dead. I have managed to keep the flower beds alive without allowing our water bill to get completely out of control. It reminds me of a story I did many, many years ago up in the Dorsey community near Fulton in Itawamba County. My mama told me about an older couple who had about an acre of azaleas in their front yard. So, during those magic two weeks in the spring when azaleas look their best, I loaded up the camera and headed up there.
The old folks used to say one extreme follows another. I sincerely hope the heat and drought we just went through is attached to last winter’s extreme cold snaps and not a prelude to an extreme winter ahead to match this summer.
And I apologize. I don’t remember the couple’s names. My scripts from back then are safely filed away on computers that no longer work. But their yard was absolutely beautiful. I asked them if it was difficult taking care of them. The man told me they pretty much took care of themselves if the weather was good. And if it was dry, he watered them. At that point his wife sort of let out a “harumph” and told me about one summer that must have been as dry as the one we’ve just had. She said she opened the water bill one month and it was $500. She asked her husband about it. He said he had to water the azaleas. They had put too much work into them to just let them die. She told him, “We get one more water bill for $500 and I’ll die!”
Speaking of the lack of rain and things dying. I remember a story I just did recently in the Greenwood Cemetery in downtown Jackson. Cecile Wardlaw is the executive director of the Greenwood Cemetery Association. She called me and told me the oddest thing was happening. The grass on some of the graves was dying. Not all of them, but some were perfect rectangle outlines of the graves. It didn’t matter the age. She said the graves emerging like that was helpful to some degree because the old cemetery has many unmarked graves and the dying grass helped locate them.
I’m glad something good came from the drought.
The old folks used to say one extreme follows another. I sincerely hope the heat and drought we just went through is attached to last winter’s extreme cold snaps and not a prelude to an extreme winter ahead to match this summer. If it is, I’d suggest we dig out our warmest coats and have them ready.
