The new Scrawlspace

Welcome to the new Scrawlspace.
I've been a bit Web shy since the debacle over the holidays, but now in the light of the summer sun, I begin to feel ready to gird my loins and return to the virtual realm.The topic of the summer is RAIN. Rain and rain and rain. I should build an ark.

I'm an Oklahoman. I am accustomed to Oklahoma summers. That means that the definition of "summer" to me is "three and a half months of nearly unbearable, suffocating heat, blazing sun and the near complete absence of precipitation, punctuated at irregular intervals by tremendous thunderstorms and tornados."

This, in other words, is not summer. I don't know what it is. Monsoon season. I know I should be grateful for the rain after the droughts of recent years and the wildfires that lapped right up to the outskirts of the city last year, but this is ridiculous. Enough, already. Uncle! Yes, the yard is verdant, but my poor vegetable garden is stunted. I grow peppers and tomatoes...hot weather plants. And we've barely crested 90 degrees this year. My pepper plants, which should be stretching out deep roots and popping out peppers by now, are crouched in the garden like wet cats, disconsolate and sulky. The tomatos like rain and even they are getting yellow leaves and have a look of grim endurance about them. I should have planted rice.

Twice now the rain has flooded over the garden and washed all my mulch -- cedar mulch for the walk and leaf mulch for the beds together -- all to one end of the garden and piled it up against the fence. Putting mulch out once is not so bad. Putting mulch out three times stinks.