Rain Rain Come Again Any Day

It's overcast but still really warm... every time it clouds over these days we sit with baited breath for those pearly drops of moisture to hit the roof... a merry drumming that would make us all happy, happy, happy. It is dry.... really dry... scary dry. We have no grass. It died a couple of weeks ago. The flowers on my deck are ok because I water them but when you get heat like this for prolonged periods then it becomes disastrous. I am glad we didn't plant a garden this year as anything we planted would have dried up ages ago and would have been horrifying to watch. It is so dry that it is beginning to look like fall. The trees have begun to turn golden and if we don't get rain soon we will lose a lot of them. This is drought in the truest sense.

It was only a short four years ago that we suffered the same terrible devastation. Poplar trees died in droves because of course their root systems are connected so when one dies there will be a whole patch that dies. We spent the next year taking dead Poplars out of our yard. We will have to do it again make no mistake.
Teapot went to the farm where we buy hay a few days ago and once again it looks like hay will be at a premium price. On his way there though, he saw an odd thing. He was driving along and the fields on the left hand side of the highway were yellow and bare. The fields on the right were not, actually they were quite lovely and green still. Then he noticed that the road looked like it was wet which also was odd since we have not had rain for quite some time. He pulled over to investigate and discovered that the wet highway was wet from the dead bodies of grasshoppers. They had been making their way across the highway from the dead field to the green field.... this is also not good. I went to a friends house in Alberta last year and saw a grasshopper plague like nothing I have ever seen. The grasshoppers had eaten every living thing and were working on the fleece of an old sheep that was too old to move around much. They were literally shearing her wool down to the skin. I never want to see anything so horrifying again. It really is dreadful to watch.

Today it has been windy and of course that adds to the miserable blight of drought. It whisks the moisture away so very fast and turns everything to powder. The winds whorls around taking with it the dry dust that once was the rich soil of our garden. It is spectacularly bright without the rich green beauty of the trees and add to that the Pine Beetle kill and you have a disaster zone. I feel bad for the farmers and I feel bad for the animals that make their homes in the forest.
Sadly, this last week I have begun to watch the birds depart for greener pastures. They are drifting away in small flocks unlike the great flocks of autumn. They hatch their younglings and once they can fly they leave to find a place father south that is not so badly affected by drought.
I am afraid of what will happen to this beautiful valley if we do not get rain soon.

This expat Newfy who grew up with so much fog, drizzle, and rain now wonders why I hated the stuff so much.... I wish the good Lord would send our way a little of the rain that the prairies are receiving too much of....