Who’s In Charge
If you’re looking at the map, I live in that orange area where Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas come together.
The heat and drought are bearing down in Mississippi Delta. Trees are dying, non-native plants (as they should) are dying, people are dying, and for yet another week, we have heat indices in the 105 to 110 degree range.
According to the National Weather Service, the Delta is in the extreme drought category D3, the second worst of a five level classification. 2007 is one of the five driest years in history for this part of the Delta, the driest since 1936. Year to date, we have a deficit of 14.26 inches of rain.
It’s expected to continue through August, and since September and October are traditionally amongst our driest months, there’s really no relief in sight.
Fields of corn are ruined, and farmers hoping to cash in on the ethanol Trojan Horse may be facing some significant financial losses. Corn is an environmentally intensive crop, requiring prodigious amounts of water and fertilizer. To convert it to fuel, you end up with a net energy loss approaching or possibly exceeding 65%. Not too smart, as my grandma used to say.
And while there are no water rationing orders, thanks to a increasingly over used but resilient and bountiful aquifer (Memphis has the best drinking water, hands down, in the world), it should be clear to any thinking person that trying to maintain a deep green lawn makes no sense whatsoever. Certainly not in these conditions or any, for that matter.
Which brings me to another question. Why do people water and fertilize their lawns to the max so they’ll grow like crazy and then need to be cut? Fertilize, water, grow and cut. Repeat. Repeat again. Use fossil fuel all along the way and repeat again. Again, not too smart.
If there’s anything to be learned from this, it’s who’s really in charge. Mother Nature of course, that often inconvenient but inescapable reality that often toys with the folly of men and their markets.
I’m going to sit in the shade and have a mint julep.
“The rain is famous for falling on the just and unjust alike, but if I had the management of such affairs I would rain softly and sweetly on the just, but if I caught a sample of the unjust out doors I would drown him.” -Mark Twain
Great Twain quote!
Here on the Pacific Plate, temporarily welded to North America, we’re in our normal summer drought. Last winter’s rains were scant, so the reservoirs are low and water restrictions, such as they are, are in effect.
However, we do have the fog, near every morning, cloaking the trees and the native vegetation, providing moisture and blessed relief from the heat evident everywhere else. Even when it lies enticingly offshore, the fog provides cool breezes to salve our fevered brows. Daily bike rides are refreshing, late afternoons just right for a G&T on the veranda, nights are cool for good sleeping.
Life is good.
I feel your pain. It’s been hot as hell and more humid that one man can stand. We’ve got a statewide open burn ban back in place. We had one earlier this year at the beginning of summer. I was hoping to go camping at Uwharrie National forest this weekend, but with the burn ban I’m going to have to be extra careful with the fire. Don’t want to break any laws…the heat never lets up here in the southland. I’d like to disagree on the water. Promised land road, Olean, NY, grandma’s house. It’s gotta have Memphis beat. On the irrigation front, there’s an empty lot down the road watering natural vegetation, in other words “weeds.” Why they’re watering these just to cut them down and plant grass…well if we could figure that simple question out, it’d explain a whole lot more.
My next door neighbor at my new place kindly cuts my lawn when he cuts his. They are both small. The other day he was mildly complaining to me that he waters his yard, but does not water mine, and somehow, my yard is greener. I thought of your talks of grass lawns and kind of chuckled at the irony, because I don’t really care if my lawn is green.
Lorin- make sure you don’t live in a housing development the HOA might fine you for that spot of brownish grass in the front yard. It’s just so “unsightly.” If I lived in one of those places, I’d take some herbicide and write a big FU in the lawn. I mean hey, if you’re going to get fined, you might as well go out with a bang.