Relative Something

Lily of the valley spotted in our yard last night when I was out executing the inaugural lawn mow of the season. It looks like pretty much every little thing that grows is about as happy as possible out there. Perennials galore, trees and bushes, a variety of ground cover, a fair number of flowering plants, and a few too many from the class of weeds. It’s a wonderful display of nature.

I saw a brief segment on the History Channel about the years of drought in the 1930’s that led to the dust bowl and the black blizzard clouds of topsoil that rose thousands of feet in the air. Think about the happenstance timing of being alive during times of such unique extremes. For a time, it can seem that there is nothing but dry, sandy desert soil in a region. It may happen in the years of life from 5 to 15. What a difficult childhood.

Or, born at another time, those years of childhood might have been filled with running through fields of tall grass, exploring down at the creek, playing on a tree swing, and catching frogs or lightning bugs in the 1950’s.

Looking at the lush growth in my little corner of the world right now, I found myself aware of how entirely different things could be if a drought of the sort that impacted the middle of our country in the ’30s were to occur here for a similar duration.