Good Morning.
This is the first time in my nearly three quarters of a century on this earth that I didn't see a lawn sprinkler in use all summer long. The grass usually comes in nice and green during a rainy April and May and stays that way until the summer heat dries everything to the color of hay unless it's watered by hand or by God. This year it was by God but maybe that's not as wonderful as it seems. I think the big guy is crying buckets and I'll leave it at that, but whatever his frame of mind, he watered the lawns in my city so frequently that they stayed nicely green and in my case a bit weedy throughout the season. I assume the people with automatic sprinklers shut them down so those funny little heads wouldn't pop up in the middle of another deluge. I assume the city will use the money they didn't have to spend watering the parks on snow removal. God also knows how to make it snow ten feet without batting an eye.
We have just finished another two weeks of nearly constant rain. It has fallen gently and in giant sheets. It has fallen all day and all night without stopping to catch its breath. During a brief respite on Wednesday, I hustled off to do an errand that required me to leave my car - I like drive thru stuff like banks and dry cleaners - and the minute I got to the store, it was raining again. I hadn't brought along an umbrella because I'm generally a hopeful person, so I stayed in my vehicle in a supermarket parking lot for forty minutes until it let up, quickly did my shopping, and got home only seconds before it started again.
I like green but the trees are taking their sweet time turning the oranges and yellows that I'm supposed to be able to see from my living room window. A quaking aspen across the street is the color of a dull Dijon mustard instead of the bright variety we used to throw on a hot dog before we opted for Dijon because it sounded French and fancy. The aspen looks kind of depressed,
tucked in among much taller oaks that haven't changed a bit. Only half of one tree in my yard is doing what it's
supposed to do in October because it apparently has a split personality. The maples around town are in much better shape psychologically and give me hope that everything else will follow their lead before the snow comes. My son called from Chicago on Wednesday and asked if it was snowing yet. I told him that the seasons are not supposed to run together like unsorted clothes in a washing machine. The trees are supposed to be green from May to September and turn pretty colors and shed their leaves in October. They're brown and bare for Thanksgiving in keeping with sort of a brown holiday with the turkey and dressing and all, and they're covered with snow starting in mid-December and ending, promptly, on March first. There should be none of this lingering foolishness that makes people plead for divine intervention. A month later the rain starts again and by July the sprinklers are doing their thing in the city and the giant irrigation systems are spraying the crops in the country. That's the way it's supposed to work, but not this year, and it's a matter for spiritual contemplation about the why of all of it. Next year it will probably be dry as a bone because God is mad instead of sad, and I shudder to think what will have happened between now and then to make him feel that way.
Best regards,
Elisabeth
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