Posts Tagged ‘dry spell’
Politispam Inundation
Our poor phones and the mailbox have been working overtime lately due to a spring election in the state of Wisconsin. Apparently, the safety and sanctity of the entire country hinges on our votes for the next judge added to our state supreme court. It’s not just our friends and neighbors weighing in on what would be good for the state; it is a variety of national political endorsing organizations that fervently need their patsy to gain a position of power to swing this state and thus the entire country in the direction they need to further their agendas.
Man, I miss the days when judges’ biases were just a little bit harder to discern. There’s probably an argument for the exposure being more valuable to help us make our decisions when it comes time to elect a judge. However, when needing to hide their bias, it was harder to make obvious judgments that would out them.
In this day and age, it seems hiding misbehaviors is no longer necessary. If a judge were to accept expensive trips on yachts and any other number of special favors, you’d expect there to be consequences. Hello, Clarence Thomas. How are things working out for you? No problem.
According to the voice and text messages popping on my phone by the hour and the flyers coming by snail mail, I should be very afraid.
I am afraid. I’m afraid it’s too late. We’ll vote, but I believe it’s too little, too late. In all honestly, I don’t feel surviving for four years of the current President and his minions will bring us out of the current disaster unfolding.
What little hope I hold is that we can continue to maintain our little sanctuary space on 20 small acres of beautiful land where I will continue to welcome anyone who suffers oppression from the current regime a chance to hide and cope.
They may not get a chance to enjoy Paddock Lake during dry spells, though. That last snowstorm that passed south of us and left us high and dry has contributed to the disappearance of water in the lake today. It is becoming a reasonable gauge I will refer to in determining how dry the land around here has become.
I guess I will welcome the rain that is forecast for overnight tonight.
.
.
Passing Peak
One day you wake up and notice the dominant shade out the window is yellow-brown. Honestly, it seems like it happens overnight. Tuesday, the trees were ablaze with vibrant hues of red and orange with green and yellow highlights backed by a blue sky to set them all off magnificently.
Yesterday, it looked as if a switch had been flipped to subdue the magnificence and replace it with a dulled pallor of decaying leaves.
The high heat of Tuesday held the potential of triggering some thunderstorms overnight but our roof received nary a drop. Somewhere around zero-dark-thirty, my full bladder nudged me out of a perfect slumber and in semi-consciousness I suspected I was hearing rainfall. Turned out to be the furnace fan noise through the floor vent.
A trip to the bathroom rousted me enough to check my phone for weather details and I saw there was an alert of lightning strikes nearby. I pulled up the radar image and discovered the line of stormy weather had split around us to the north and south. That would be great luck if you were hoping to dodge bad weather but it is rotten luck when the ground is so dry it is cracking open in a gaping grimace of distressed thirst.
The sparse sprinkles that misted down from passing clouds yesterday afternoon were just a mocking wetness that barely settled dust. It is weird to watch the dark rain clouds in the sky moving by all around us but never overhead.
The bright spot that occurred for us was the arrival of a truck up the driveway with a logo from the underground cable company that is installing fiber optic broadband internet cables in our county. The guy had just completed splicing the line at the road and was coming up to the house to check the strength of the signal.
We now have an appointment scheduled for in-home installation of the modem, the last step to get us connected to high-speed internet.
At least the technician didn’t have to deal with any rain while he worked to splice our fiber.
.
.
Sweaty Horses
We are on our umpteenth day in a row of high-heat weather and the stress on growing plants is getting visible. Overnight Tuesday we were awoken by a brilliant flash of lightning with its associated crack of thunder that one would assume to equal rainfall. We received no noticeable moisture from the atmosphere.
Where we haven’t kept up with watering, our plants are suffering.
Our animals all seem to be tolerating the heat, but the horses are a sweaty mess. They almost look like they’ve just finished running a race. [slight exaggeration] To add a little flamboyance to their appearance, they take turns rolling in the dusty dirt to create a little mud pack that seems to provide some protection from the hot sun and biting flies.
The chicks don’t seem to care about the heat because they have those fabulous grassy courtyards covered by shade where they can romp all day long. We are in the phase of chick-rearing that requires forcing them back into the coop by hand because they haven’t properly developed that natural instinct of going inside on their own for the night.
Chick wrangling is not one of my favorite tasks. They don’t make it easy.
When we finally got to the last couple of the older bunch, they actually chose to run up the ramp themselves instead of succumbing to the grasp of our scary hands. It inspired me to next time devise a method of corralling them into an ever-shrinking space that funnels directly to the ramp so they can practice getting back inside without being grabbed.
By the time all the chick chasing was done, it was the humans who were sweaty.
We chose to pass on the rolling in the dirt thing.
.
.
Relative Something 