Relative Something

We zoomed home without incident yesterday, except for one unsettling moment at a construction site. Signs were warning of the road work ahead, so I wasn’t surprised when traffic came to a halt. The shock came when the large truck we were following began moving, revealing many emergency vehicles with flashing lights instead of construction equipment.

There was an ambulance and a firetruck, two damaged vehicles, and a significant number of former occupants congregated nearby. Behind all the EMS personnel stood all the construction crews biding their time until the scene was turned back over to them.

The dew point temperature when we left Hayward read 79°F, with temps already in the 80s. The level of mugginess was downright tropical. I checked the reading for 125 miles away at home and found the same result. Yuck.

What we found when we arrived at our property was a very parched earth. Wherever trees shaded the grass, it looked a healthy green. Anywhere the sun was baking the turf, it was visibly brittle and fading to beige.

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Asher met us with surprising calm, acknowledging our return with a mere lean against each of us in turn for some scratches. It was a greeting we appreciated. He seems so well-adjusted and content with the living conditions we are providing for him. It helps to have great animal sitters covering our absences.

There wasn’t a lot we could do to offer the horses relief from the heat. Cyndie put fly masks on to give their eyes a break from the nagging pests and turned up the speed on the fans aimed under the overhang.

It looked like the horses might have been digging for water in the dry bed of Paddock Lake. They don’t normally mess with it after the water evaporates, leaving the bottom to become covered with a cracked, dried mud base. Now it looks a bit like they are creating a sandbox.

We need rain. I’m not exactly comforted by the forecast that suggests chances of storms on Thursday and Friday after the extremely dangerous tornado that hit Appleton and Menasha in northeastern Wisconsin yesterday. We just want some moisture to fall, and not in the form of 100% humidity. Is a good soaking rain too much to ask?

Our soil is parched, I tell ya. It needs a drink!

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