Okay, so why is it raining every weekend? and other complaints
Rain, rain, rain here in New England – for the past few weekends. Today is the same.
It doesn’t matter all that much to me, since I set my own hours and weekends are not especially special. But I know it matters to the vast majority of people. And in New England, with its long winters, spring and summer and fall are especially precious, with summer and warm sunny weather a particularly looked-forward-to part of the year.
I know rain is good for the flowers (the weeds, too). Except that the blossoms on the trees – now mostly past – drop quickly in all the rain, and therefore their time is shortened. And vacationers who’ve planned weekend visits and made reservations, as well as the shop and restaurant owners in resort areas – what of them? The businesses need to make a lot of money in the summer in order to keep afloat.
While I’m complaining, I might as well add another gripe: why do so many good events come all at once? I can experience lengthy periods when there’s not much that’s happening in the social sense, and then bingo! Four competing invitations, or several out-of-town visitors on the same day, and no ability to do it all. I realize it’s hardly the worst problem in the world, but it still makes me grind my teeth in frustration that it’s not more spaced out.
Have a nice weekend, folks.
The Rain it Raineth by Charles Bowen
The rain it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fella;
But chiefly on the just, because
The unjust hath the just’s umbrella.
Gardener’s Prayer by Karel Capek, author of “R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots)” and “War with the Newts”
O Lord, grant that in some way
it may rain every day,
Say from about midnight until three o’clock
in the morning,
But, You see, it must be gentle and warm
so that it can soak in;
Grant that at the same time it would not rain on
campion, alyssum, helianthus, lavendar, and others which
You in Your infinite wisdom know
are drought-loving plants-
I will write their names on a bit of paper
if you like-
And grant that the sun may shine
the whole day long,
But not everywhere (not, for instance, on the
gentian, plantain lily, and rhododendron)
and not too much;
That there may be plenty of dew and little wind,
enough worms, no lice and snails, or mildew,
and that once a week thin liquid manure and guano
may fall from heaven.
Amen.
bof:
I especially like the Gardener’s Prayer.
In the past 3 wks or so we have had a little more than 4 in. of rain. We need it badly. Mountain snowpack was not good this yr. We depend on the snowpack for water to fill reservoirs. We night not get very much rain for the rest of the summer. Soon, everything will be brown. No complaints here about the rain.
Reporting in from South Central Texas. Historically, we average 32 inches of rain yearly. Currently negative 62 inches of rain compared to average over the past six years.
Bad but not as bad as the drought of 1950-1957 where it was negative 92 inches of rain. I remember as a kid my father and uncles talking about that one.
The drought has to end sometime but I pray it is soon. We desperately need the rain. At the same time I do not wish for the floods of 1998 and 2002 that drowned dozens of folks caught out in the storms.
And no, I don’t believe that human-caused Climate Change caused this so don’t even go there. It’s weather.
bof, those are pretty! How did you find them?
Yes indeed, to neo’s points. Precisely this. Today was torrential here. Saturday of Souls on our calendar, so we had Liturgy in the morning, which meant that I hadn’t really planned for other events, anyway. But reaching the church in that storm was a bit of an effort.
It has rained and rained and rained in Central New York every day for weeks. Months. And chilly, too. Every now and then we get a day or two of warmth and sunlight, and we say to each other, “Thank goodness it’s over! The sun is here!” The next day it starts raining again.
Burn ban started June 1 due to dry conditions. Usually starts around July 1. Sunny and hot. Weather service heat advisory for tomorrow. Might get a little rain on Friday.
Soon, everything will be brown.
Same here. We have hit the dry time, but the hills are green and there is still a bit of snow on top of the mountains. But the green is starting to fade, and the canyon river, while running higher than two weeks ago, is running less than last year. The afternoon temperatures have been in the 70’s and I’m enjoying the weather while it lasts. It won’t be long before temperatures are in the 80’s and 90’s.
@bof The Gardener’s Prayer is lovely.
@Philip Sells
They are just things I stumbled across sometime in the last eight or nine decades. Glad you like them. The Czech writer Karel Capek (the C should have a diacritical mark but I don’t know how to type it) is perhaps most famous nowadays for coining the word “robot” for an artificial human.