Rain Envy

The blessing of rain came at three o'clock this morning. There was lightning! There was thunder! When Dennis checked the rain gauge it registered 1-1/2 inches. We could hardly believe our good luck.

I sent a message to our neighbor Laurie. "How much rain in your rain gauges?" (They have three.)

"Half an inch," she replied, adding that she is going to move to our house, where we consistently get more rain than she does.

Here in the drought belt whenever there's rain in the area e-mail messages go flying between friends and neighbors. Typically these messages are initiated by those who got rain.

"We had a nice soaking rain for about 45 minutes. Hope it rained at your house, too," they say.

 Sometimes, though, the  person who didn't get rain initiates the exchange. "I heard thunder at three o'clock," Barb wrote this morning, "but it only sprinkled. Did you get rain?"

Right now we're obsessed with rain and long for it. Summer rain in Kansas is almost always spotty. Western Missouri is pretty much the same. My brother, who lives there, told me a few weeks ago that rain fell on the north half of his tiny town (population: 218) but not on the south half where he lives. That's how it always is: some get it, some don't.

Those of us who don't get rain rejoice for those who receive its blessing, but we also feel a twinge of that rascally, deadly sin of envy. We try not to, but we can't deny the feeling. We're so weary of dragging hoses around, picking and choosing the plants we will try to keep alive and watching the others dry up. All the while our hope and resolve wilt under the unrelenting heat.

We're only human. A little twinge of envy doesn't seem so deadly under these circumstances. And sooner or later, our turn will come.

Uh-Oh, Am I in Trouble?

Seeing Things Differently

I won't write about the continuing drought and heat. It's tiresome. Instead I'm wanting to share the spider tunnel I discovered this morning while sweeping the garage.

It is probably the home of a wolf spider, a kind of spider I rather like. I like it because it doesn't wander from its lair, instead waiting for its food to blunder into the trap. Consequently, it disposes of lots of pesky insects. I let one build its tunnel in my bedroom curtains one summer. We respected each other's territory.

This particular tunnel is interesting because it incorporates a number of dead leaves which provide camouflage. The spider incorporated one green leaf, which you can see forms the floor of the tunnel.

Here's where seeing things differently comes in. I took several photos of the tunnel and in one of them I saw the green leaf differently.

I saw a green face under a cowl, its eyes shaded by the cowl overhang. It appears to be a woman entrapped by the tunnel. She stares out mournfully. Maybe its easier to see if magnified a little.

OK, so you can't see it. Don't feel bad about it. I think it happens when I let my eyes go out of focus briefly, maybe a result of astigmatism. I see faces in the grain of wood, my cottage cheese bedroom ceiling, sand formations, even in the backs of my closed eyelids. These are not the faces of people I know; they are anonymous.

Dennis thinks I'm a little nuts, but seeing faces is one of my favorite entertainments. It always has been. I remember the first faces I saw as a child. They appeared on the front of Mother's buffet. They were two prim ladies facing each other in profile. They had formal hairdos.

Do I really see things that much differently? I'll bet other people out there have similar experiences. I hope they do.

Hanging in There

The spotted fawn appears to have grown since it first appeared in these pages four days ago. Now it is tall enough to drink more comfortably from the bird bath.

This means that it is receiving nourishment from its mother, who also sometimes comes to drink along with another, younger doe. The trio also drink from our neighbor's bird bath.

They've never taken a drink from the large pot of water, although the fawn was tempted a couple of days ago. It approached the water pot several times, but jumped back in alarm when it got close enough to see its own reflection in the water. That's fine; we refill the bird bath several times each day for the deer and for the hordes of birds who come to bathe and drink.

Obviously our drought continues unabated, along with daily temperatures over 100º. As the photo shows, not all of the grass is dormant. Grass that is protected by the shade of trees still has some green showing. We don't water the grass, only recently-planted trees, the tomatoes and sweet potatoes, two clematis and the bed of hostas.

We don't hope for much good to come of this summer, but I'm hoping that this fawn will hang in there and live to maturity.

Helpless

This morning, already edgy from the endless heat, I read a New York Times opinion piece by Mark Bittman, "Endless Summer." http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/the-endless-summer/ It brought tears to my eyes and a vision of what climate change will unleash upon us all.

I was fired up to write an appeal to America to wake up and smell the coffee, to make radical changes in our way of life, but then my practical side turned to thoughts of what we individual Americans might do to change course. I couldn't think of any actions we might take to overcome the complete power of big business. How can we as a people insist that we invest in benign forms of energy production, that conservation be encouraged, and that we begin to fulfill our obligations under the Kyoto Treaty, which George Bush reneged on. Business, now a person under rule of our Supreme Court, owns our government. They bought it with permission of the court and the cooperation of our federal government. There was no point in urging my fellow Americans to take action.

So I lay down on my bed, my refuge, to calm down. The ceiling and walls of the room are perfect meditation foci. Their angles and gentle color variations sooth my spirit. I floated.

When I felt restored, I thought of Candide, who roamed the earth finding trouble everywhere. He ended up back at home, tending his garden. When there's no viable course of action on the big stage, I remembered once again that I should do as Voltaire advised, tend my garden.

Unfortunately, there's not much garden to tend this summer, but the onions and shallots had been drying for three weeks and were ready for storage. I went to work, cleaning the shallots and filling a basket with them. Then I braided the onions, which look pretty if I do say so myself. Soon we will move them to the basement's cooler environment.

Next best to tending one's garden is baking, so I made a pie – blueberry with a peach thrown in for variety. By this time I was in a whimsical mood.

Yes, I used an electric oven that draws power from a coal-fired plant north of Lawrence, so I did my bit to further change our climate. And yes, the heat pump was cooling the house. I'm sorry. I'll do the best I can to live modestly and conservatively (in the true sense of the word) and hope others are doing the same. At the same time I hope to live happily in the moment.

All for Money

I've seen it coming for years – capitalism's rococo period. Capitalism, I'm sorry to say, breeds greed and provides greed a fertile ground for growth. So long as cultures are guided by conscience and respect for fellow human beings, greed can be held at bay. Some of this country's greatest capitalists have also been its greatest benefactors. Capitalists today, perhaps excepting Bill and Melinda Gates, seem not to be filling the benefactor role. I think of them as radical capitalists, capitalists who have no regard for other human beings.

It's a matter of conscience, I believe. We, as a country, seem to have misplaced ours.

What radical capitalists need to understand is that in their greed they may destroy the markets on which they depend. If the general populace becomes so impoverished it cannot purchase the products entrepreneurs produce and capitalists invest in, the whole system will collapse. You cannot get blood out of a turnip.

In addition, radical capitalists exploit the earth's natural resources irresponsibly. Get at the resource in the cheapest way possible in order to maximize profits. Case in point: the BP oil spill.

I'm not sure what motivates greedy people. Have they no humility? Have they no compassion? Do they not comprehend their impact on the earth's livability? Have they no limits?

Capitalism is here to stay, no doubt, but can't we insist on a conscionable capitalism? Not through government regulations, but through an acknowledgment that we're all in this world together and that we owe each other something more than a pittance. We owe each other a sense of dignity. As for this earth, we owe it our very lives. The earth, above all, deserves our respect and gratitude.

Drought

Kansas is in its worst drought since 1953. Wildlife is suffering, as this photo attests.

Where is its mama?

After the fawn left I put a full bucket of water under a nearby tree. I hope the fawn finds it.