It’s Raining

Some summers it seems that the rain never stops. Planting in the mud isn’t much fun, nor is pulling weeds from the wet soil. At least that’s true with whatever kind of soil we have at our house.

For the past couple of weeks, it has seemed like rain was just around the corner, but frustratingly far around that corner. We watered some – usually just enough to keep things alive until the rain comes. Despite our meager watering efforts some new plants succumbed to the heat and dryness.

Today it is raining. Maybe it will rain a lot. The last time we expected rain we were told to expect multiple inches but got only one-tenth. This time the rain total will be much higher, judging by what I see out the window.

In Wisconsin we are fortunate to get a good amount of rain. I feel bad for the people in Southern California, among many places around the world, where drought has become a way of life. The biggest drought I can remember here was in 1988, I think, where it didn’t rain from Mothers’ Day until the first week of August. But that’s the exception, not the rule.

We’ve also had very rainy years. One year while I was working at the Wisconsin State Fair the weather people said we got 13 inches of rain. Somebody there joked that the animals in the livestock barns were pairing up.

I’ve never seen the kind of flooding that hurricanes bring to costal areas, or the interior river system. It’s a testament to those people in flooded communities that they can bounce back from weather like that.

So, rain: good or bad? The answer, of course, is yes. It’s like so many things in life. We need it, but if we get too much or too little, harm can result.

The band called Sweet did a song about getting too much of something or not enough. Here are a few of the words:

“Love is like oxygen.

You get too much, you get too high,

Not enough and you’re going to die.”

 

It’s funny: gardens don’t need love, though they benefit from being cared for. They also don’t need oxygen, and in fact they produce it. They need rain, and today our garden got some.