Slow and steady makes the web
This morning on the drive to school we saw the moon for the first time in what feels like weeks. The kid has always been a bit moon fixated, and the surprise this morning was a nearly full one, peeking over the woods at us.
Thomas Friedman said global warming won’t come necessarily as something we’ll see in our daily lives but instead will be something the post office delivers: higher energy and insurance bills. It’s not so much global warming, he says, but global weirding. And “weird” is one word a person could ascribe to this year’s weather in much of the U.S.
I tried not to think about the record rain we have had when I put my boots on this morning. Records: what do they really mean to me, I thought: I have only been here four years and every year we appear to have a period of record rainfall. Who cares if it’s a record. Its effects are the same. Lots of rain (or its opposite, or heat, or cold) are not exactly welcome. If one is a gardener, one tends to lobby for moderation. I do not appreciate this weekend’s exceptionalism.
So, boots on feet, I step lightly through the gardens, wondering what all that rain really means to us. My coffee is warm but the air is damp and chilly, and the week’s sunny forecast can only be good news for what I see in the gardens. I have to stop myself from going into crisis mode, the mode which one jumps to to bail out one’s basement, say; or grabs the pellet gun at the first shrill cry of the chickens. Slow and steady, things will dry. Time to sit back and wait.
I’m not very good at sitting and waiting, though. With the financial crisis, climate change, this election…I am more jumpy than ever.
Glad you came to visit!
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fast grow the weeds 
We’ve finally got our first cooler morning! It was 66° with a 61° dewpoint! Cool and dry! Supposed to be mostly sunny too. We didn’t get too much rain from Ike or the low that passed through, but it was humid, hot and muggy lately. This weather is a wonderful blessing.
Hope you dry out soon! My mom’s backyard is a lake and her front yard is a mud hole.
I think a lot of people are highly anxious lately. I know I am. I like Thomas Friedman’s way of putting it; global weirding is easier to understand and reconcile with the effects we’re seeing. But no matter what happens, we’re going to react, and respond, and adjust. And the water will go down. (I do think I need to think about filling in my own garden’s paths, though. It was Venice this weekend.)
I am with you. In addition to the deluge that flooded my gardens and split all my tomatoes, we have roof leaks. The forced wait (garden to dry out a little, and the same for the roof) is difficult, but good. On the up-side, this last week our hens cranked out 3 dozen eggs…
El, stay away from the news for a little while.
I will worry about Sarah Palin *for* you.
Yeah, I was at a permaculture workshop/talk this past week and guy was talking about Gwarming and saying how most think it will be really hot and dry, kinda the impression when you say global warming anyways, but he (who has studied this extensively) said everything will be *more*, and it will be more extreme and wacky. Freezes in June, rain that won’t stop, periods of dryness and on and on, and how that will affect those of us growing food. He went into our the way our gardening zones are changing rather rapidly and how the Bush administration refused to publish the info in time for his new book, it was all very interesting. Though I am not one to get freaked out. I spent all my freakedoutedness on Y2K, good grief. Not going there again.
the financial situation has me cranked into a frenzy. I’m so close to retiring back to Michigan, and there are so many things I simply can’t control, can’t do yet. Am praying that it holds together yet for awhile at least. Better, that it simply *holds together.* It’s very precarious.
Hiya Jules. Here’s hoping you have an enjoyable fall ahead of you without all those suffocating muggy days. Things are drying out here so maybe your mom’s back yard is only a pond now!
Jenny, yeah, we’ll adjust; my hope is that we do so sooner than later…and of course that we see these changes as not burdensome but instead something to be done as a point of patriotic pride. Or earth pride, even. But you know what? My woodchipped garden paths kinda washed into heaps during this particular flood! gotta get out the rake now too. sigh…
TS, I am glad your girls didn’t take an egg holiday. A couple of mine laid eggs in their run in the rain! Weirdos. But yeah even our garage leaked this time around. Rather scary, considering that’s the newest roof around. Our basement is now fully dry though.
CC, thank you for shouldering my burden. Every day there are new glimmers of hope. Yesterday it came in the form of “tanning bed.”
Shawna, you freaked out over Y2K? Huh. I was living in a city then so didn’t really consider it a problem. But yes the USDA hardiness zone maps supposedly have changed, and now we supposedly live in Zone 7 (though you are a bit more inland than me so you might be *only* in a 6 now). I guess my only hope with it all is that most of our homegrown stuff is veggies, and they have amazingly short growing seasons, all under 80 days except those pesky melons. And my greenhouses give me a fair amount of security, or at least the illusion of security.
Hayden, you must be getting so excited. Yeah, with a lot of all this, we are all saying “well, unfortunately, this is out of my hands.” Surely I can worry a lot but yes I am wasting my energy doing so. The upside for you is the contractors around here are hungry now!