It's day number... well who knows when it actually rained here for greater than 10 minutes in the last six months or more. I think we are now at a negative point in the rainfall for this area. You know how they say "We have 6 out of the 10 inches we normally get for this time of hear"... well we probably are sitting at a negative 6 inches for our year. This means that the ground is so dry it is actually pulling the humidity out of the air.
Not that we couldn't do with less humidity. How is it that we can be going through this drought and yet the moisture just hangs in the air? I mean come on Nature the dry hot weather is punishment enough. Do you have to taunt us too. "Feel this?" Nature asks as she slaps and 88 percent humidity day into your face, "It could be rain if I wanted to work that hard and form it into drops, but Nah - I think I'll just take the day off." Stupid, lazy Nature.
So, since Nature won't do her job, I have stepped in and become the rain for my garden. Actually I think of it more like RAIN - as if I have become the personification of that phenomenon. To the outside observer I may look as if I am some overly hot, tired and strangely dressed person holding a garden hose, but on the inside I am RAIN - a benevolent supernatural force bequeathing a fountain of refreshment to the downtrodden plant masses.
Perhaps it is just the humidity laden heat addling my brain, but this somehow makes the hour or more I spend each and every morning since the first week of March watering the garden just a little bit more tolerable. I know what you are thinking -"Just turn on the sprinkler and stop your moaning" but a sprinkler would not do. In a prolonged drought you must focus your watering where it matters otherwise your water bill will easily slip into the triple digits and you will be paying a high premium for growing your own food.
That's what makes RAIN even more powerful. The water only falls where I choose to let it fall. Some plant pisses me off and I can cut off its supply - and don't think I fail to use that threat to certain plants that seem to be holding back on the food crop. "Set that cucumber you little vine or else," RAIN says, holding the stream of water just out of reach.
Actually RAIN may talk big but in truth I am a wimp when it comes to 'cutting off the supply'. There are several vegetable plants that have gone past the usable stage and are just hanging around the garden now, looking sort of shabby. I consider not watering them because after all I am a gardener and we are supposed to be efficient and intolerant of plant weaknesses. I, however am troubled by a tendency toward anthropomorphism - in short, every plant out there has a distinct personality. This tendency makes it extremely hard to do things like 'thin the seedlings' and gets much, much worse the longer a plant has been growing. Killing such a plant gives me a pang of conscience - like it's a small murder.
I am able to pull weeds because I think of them as violent and rude gang members attacking my companion plants but even some of them get into my psyche and I let them live out there lives unmolested. As you have no doubt already guessed, my garden sometimes looks like a plant riot.
But at least when I am out there I am surrounded by 'friends' - and I am RAIN.
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