True Love

Greetings from Domelandia,

We went to see the final chapter of the Harry Potter saga a couple of Saturdays ago. We stopped for breakfast at George's Restaurant in Walsenburg. They were slammed - standing room only - and the waitresses were taking orders from the customers as we waited for a table.

Our waitress finished cleaning a table for two and motioned for us to sit down.

"Oh," I said, "The seat is wet." The Viking promptly sat down, wiggled around in the seat, and then jumped up and offered me the nice dry side.

The lady at the next table really got a kick out of that. She said, "That's what you call true love."

Yep.

Drought

Greetings from Domelandia,
Wherever you turn your face, you will be fulfilled by love, but not from other humans. You can see a tree and feel all the love coming from the tree to you...you will see God everywhere.
- Don Miguel Ruiz, The Mastery of Love

I actually did feel love coming from our trees, grass, and flowers while I was watering them on a dry afternoon this past June. We'd had no rain to speak of since the spring. On my daily walks in the forest, the pine needles crackled under my feet. The air was dusty and full of smoke from fires burning in Raton, Arizona, and Los Alamos. I had used up all the rainwater that we'd collected and was now using our well water to keep everything alive, knowing that sometimes in droughts, wells can go dry. As the sun beat down on me (and everything else) the breeze blew some mist from the sprinkler into my face, lusciously cool and wet.

And in that moment I felt so much love all around me. I feel love for our land, the wild world, all the time, but that day I felt it loving me back.

I am thinking of those in Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas who are struggling with the drought right now, and I hope that you get rain soon.

Being in a drought is awful. It is easy to get depressed because we have zero control over it and because it is physically and mentally uncomfortable. We don't realize how much we depend on rain to make us feel good. (Ask a farmer.) Mix no water with high temperatures, and the thought of going outside is painful. Painful, too, watching everything turn brown when it should be green. And scary as hell if you live in a forest. But we keep going, keep watering everything, and we look to the skies for some help.

In July, praise be! the monsoons moved in. Our moods improved as things got greener. Tuesday I was in the Zone, weeding a neglected iris bed, mowing grass that hadn't been there 2 weeks ago, and madly reapplying bug repellent to my clothes, face, and hat to combat the fresh onslaught of newborn mosquitoes. I had another 20 minutes or so to go and BOOM a clap of thunder made me look up. There was lightning and thunder all around me and I barely got the mower put away before rain lashed the house. It was awesome.

It was like the rains we'd have back in the day when we first lived here. Back when the sunflowers lining the road towered over the roofs of our cars. Back when there were hundreds of tiny toads hopping all over the place (the chickens tried to eat them). Back when the road would get too muddy after a storm and we'd have to leave the car and hike in. Good memories.

There was too much electricity in the air for me to stay on the front porch, my favorite spot to watch thunderstorms. So from indoors I used my newfangled video camera and took pictures of our road with a river racing down it, spilling in waterfalls into the arroyo and backing up behind the crossings. We'd had a big rain on Friday last that had filled the pond and awakened all the toads. This rain quadrupled the size of the pond and the toads almost choked.

The Viking came home and we took a walk to look at the storm's effect. One meadow was littered with pine needle duff scourged from the forest by the runoff. The rushing water had moved half of a big lightning-killed tree about 25'. The pines were black and wet and clean-looking. They breathed sweetness into the air.

Thank you! and amen.

Adventures in Gardening

Greetings from Domelandia,
About a month ago I went to visit the grandkids. Because of the drought, the garden needed daily watering and the Viking was charged with the task. The second day he observed (gasp!) a gopher mound. When I returned I reset his trap, showing him how deep the tunned was by sticking my hand and arm down into the hole.

The next day - BAM! - gopher was caught. I reset the trap in case any of his cousins had designs on my bean patch. I set a 5-gallon bucket full of sand over the hole. A couple of days went by and I moved the bucket. I pulled the chain attached to the gopher trap and heard a snap. "Aw, shoot," I thought. "I'll have to reset the trap."

I pulled the chain out and discovered a 30" rattlesnake caught right behind his head in the gopher trap. I said, "Ah!" (I was too surprised to scream really loud) and flung the trap away from myself. I had to put him out of his misery. I felt bad. The poor guy was only trying to do his job. Just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The grandson got the rattles. His mom said, "There aren't many grandmothers who give their grandsons this type of gift."

I will try not to do that again any time soon.