July drought. Is this Australia or what?
By Robert LaFrance
Those of us who are susceptible to depression are also susceptible to great happiness. The latter case occurred a few days ago when, after weeks of drought, it looked as if my three gardens were finally going to get some rain.
We hadn’t had rain on Manse Hill for five weeks. My gardens and 275 apples trees – 67 varieties – were parched. The Sahara Desert was a swamp compared to our estate.
You can see why I would be elated that rain was on the way; all the signs were there, the main one being that Ted Shapiro of WAGM-TV in Presque Isle had said it wasn’t going to rain. He has an unblemished record of being wrong.
All the signs were there by 3:00 pm. I could hear the rumble of thunder in the distance. Bristol, due south about 25 kilometres, was getting drenched. I could see it from my porch. Mars Hill Mountain and its nearly thirty windmills looked as if it were drowning, dark clouds had taken over Perth-Andover and I could see a huge rain-filled cloud just coming over the hills of Bon Accord. I cracked open an Alpine and waited for the storms to give life-saving moisture to my gardens and me. I dozed.
When I awoke the sky was blue from Bristol to Grand Falls and not one drop of rain had fallen here. A grown man shouldn’t cry, and I didn’t. The drops coming from my tear ducts were caused by Dry Eye Syndrome.
I guess my question is: who’s is charge here and why is he/she so cruel?
Addendum: There was a happy ending to the story. Exactly 41 hours later, after several more storms in those surrounding communities, Kincardine finally had a good soaking rain that lasted for several hours. In fact many hours. In fact several days. In fact it’s still going on. I just saw a cucumber plant float by.
This must be New Brunswick. You know the old saying “If March comes in like a lamb it goes out like a lamb”? Our July “came in like an aardvark, went out like an eel”. In fact I just saw an eel going by.
*******************
My old friend The Perfessor (no one knows his real name) gets some odd ideas. Last evening we were sitting at a Social Distancing outdoor table at the club and sipping on some beverages when he came out with this one:
“You know, it must be embarrassing for an animal to be struck by a vehicle and become roadkill.”
I must admit my jaw dropped to my knees on hearing that comment. It reinforced my opinion that the Perfessor is one weird duck indeed. “You’re a weird duck indeed”, I commented.
“No, it’s true,” he continued. No one else argued. “Just picture, you are out in the middle of a public highway and you’re stripped and bare for all the world and Norway to see. Some people might even stop to take a photo – I know I do if it’s an unusual animal – like a porpoise or aardvark. It’s all very embarrassing.”
“Well, do you shovel the roadkill off the road to save it further embarrassment?” asked Big Ed Keene the barkeep. The perfessor looked at him as if he had grown a third head and went on to another important subject. I believe it was the papaya harvest in Haiti.
Some people are really weird, don’t you find? Except you and me of course.
********************
This year is a little different (don’t you agree?) from previous years but in spite of the inconveniences (no deaths around here so far) there are some moments of pure joy. Such was the case in late May when my spouse Diane, with the help of our neighbour Jerry, and I put up our outdoor clothesline.
Ah, the pure joy and ecstasy! And my wife enjoyed it too, being able at last to hang out her underwear so that passersby were able to see it.
She continued in that state of euphoria until the morning of Friday, July 31, when I emerged from a well-earned slumber, went outside to meet the day, and found the fully loaded clothesline had come apart and was lying on the ground. Oh, the language! And I wasn’t pleased either.
I motored to the hardware store to get some more clamps, welding rods, bolts, cotter pins, and beer and we went at that clothesline again. My wife climbed a ladder and put the line back on its pulley; I went down to the clothesline platform to do due diligence (or doo-doo diligence, considering the number of Rover’s land mines between there and there).
Trouble was, I had forgotten that Diane was still up the teetery ladder and was clutching the pole so as not to fall and break some of the rocks piled around the steel clothesline pole. I jerked on the clothesline and next thing I knew she was hanging in mid-air, clinging to the pulley.
I had a decision to make: should I run in the direction of town and hope for the best, or should I run the other way, toward those awful screams? I chose the coward’s way and headed toward the screams, where I put up the ladder so she could make her way down and kill me. Only she didn’t get a chance. I was just topping Bon Accord Mountain when she made it to the ground and down the driveway.
Lesson learned? Yes, buy a clothes dryer.
********************
In conclusion for this death-defying column, I have been keeping my eyes wide open whenever I get near a big white-blossomed plant of the carrot family. Not Queen Anne’s Lace, which is just wild carrot, but an invasive flower called Giant Hogweed. It is a bad hombre whose flower, when it gets moist, burns the hell out of human flesh. Look it up in Google and don’t get any closer to it than that.
No comments:
Post a Comment