Remember when you were little and we used to go outside and smell the roses, and there would be butterflies fluttering everywhere, drinking nectar, gently hovering over little clouds of clover and mint?
Gosh I remember when I could grow things in my yard, and they would bloom and all the little bees and little wasps would visit and my plants would hum, like an artist painting minute details with great concentration.
I hope you weren't too little to remember.
That's how I imagine conversations will go with my youngest 5 or 10 years from now.
The drought is deepening across the state. Already there are stands and stands of dead trees, crispy like the scraps of potato skins in a hot grease vat, all up and down the roads. Bigger trees are in decline, they dead too, they just don't know it yet. But already, those weakened by last year's drought, were in a fungal bloom earlier this spring. Drunken butterflies hovering all around them sipping the stinky goo that oozed from their trunks. Their crowns are beginning to die now. You can see dry green leaves, still hanging on, along with patches of bright rust orange leaves.
Regardless of health, all the trees smell like kindling, they are all so dry now.
This morning before I got onto the net, I was outside, watering the little pollinator plantings in my yard, fat lot of good is does. Just as last year, the very little new growth in the Rose of Sharons--which is shocking. These are drought hardy plants that should be at least 3 feet tall. Last year, no growth, this year, not much. Some are dropping all their leaves. Even in partial shade, they bake, unable to cool off, unable to compete with the trees for water in these desperate times. They look for all that they are two years old, like I just popped them out of a gallon pot and never water them
My butterfly bush barely bloomed at all. It was so stressed last year. It grew a whole 3 inches. It's leaves are now dropping. It is dry as a bone with regular watering. I am sure I could flood my yard, but I worry that I will dry my well up. I don't have the money to pay to dig a deeper one.
Already the vitex is drooping. Another drought hardy plant. I have it on a drip hose right now. I will leave it on for a couple hours, but as the day heats, I will have to put that hose on a mister and move it to the chicken yard. That way there is an area 20 degrees cooler under a shrub.
Oh yea that reminds me, it will be 107 today. Yesterday was 105. It's been up over a hundred now for a week and this week looks to be more of the same in the 107 range. I am going to repeat this fact whenever relevant: Photosynthesis stops at 104 degrees. Pollen is sterilized at 99 degrees.
It's so frustrating. Big fluffy cumulous clouds drift overhead. I can tell that they are moisture laden because they roll slowly on an axis but they cannot stick together over this area and make rain. The air on the ground is so dry, it's painful.
The ground is so hot even with the sod that you don't want to walk on it barefoot. Even with tough feet, it's just too hot. The pavement is hotter. The lakes are starting to recede again in some places.
As I child of these parts I can recall very hot summers, 110 wasn't unusual, but we had lakes full of water. You could go and swim in them. They had plenty of oxygen in the water, you could fish without fear.
Now, I wouldn't use that water to pump my septic tank. My tank is probably cleaner. The waters are hypoxic in many areas. Fish will start to die soon, and turtles too. The bacteria in that heated water and the algal blooms will be fierce.
The chorus of frogs has faded over these past few weeks of heat. NO Bullfrogs-still. I still listen for them. I hear the little pickerel frogs, and sometimes green frogs, and tree toads, but no Bull Frogs. The previous drought and insect dearth, must have really knocked their population down. Who knows what other chemical factors are involved? Are they dead and dying under the mud or hibernating til a few weeks of rain in the fall? All I know is I haven't heard that booming call in these parts now, for at least 2 years. It's a strange absence made stranger by the fact that no one else seems to notice.
A week ago, I witnessed a leopard frog, hopping through the hot dust, trying to get to the chicken's watering area. That would be the equivalent of myself hopping through hot dust in Africa to drink at a watering hole with a hungry pride of lions. I tried to catch the poor little thing but it got away in some flowers. If the chickens found it, I am sure they made a meal of the frog. The frog was a sign of desperation.
No one seems to notice much of anything around here, until it's so bad that spontaneous combustion seems likely. It lends my daily observations a surreal dream-like, quality. I sometimes make mention of such things in polite company and all I receive are furrowed brows and flippant hand gestures--Who Cares!
Don't you know I have to get my hair done! I have to wash my car! I have to go to the Swimming Pool, so I can ignore the dead and dying biome all around me!
All people seem to know, is that it's hot. They don't seem to make the connections to other conditions dependent on this drought, or other mechanisms driving this drought.
Oklahoma is drying up. I notice that the Choctaw tribe has been running commercials encouraging water conservation habits. All the Choctaw I have met in person have been brilliant people. This only re-enforces my good impressions of them. Is anyone listening? I don't know. I feel comforted that I am not the only one trying hard.
Is it too late to matter? I hope not.
I think sometimes I should buy rain barrels, but what would I fill them up with? I have been pestering my hubby for an aerator for our septic tank, so we can use the grey water for watering trees. It costs $$$, so I don't know when we will get around to that. Or if we will.
The price of food is going up with the price of gasoline again. I am sure that the Republicans will blame all this on the poor somehow, and conspire to raise our taxes while giving big polluters more subsidies. That will show us! I am sure that these same politicians will keep blocking any attempt to mitigate climate change via regulations to control emissions. My own state will send their local clowns to build igloos somewhere, as if that will prove that there are no problems here.
The rich will keep using city water to keep their yards lush, while the poor will try to control their water and electric bills that will sky rocket in the heat. People like me, will worry about the wells drying up. All these giant houses with enormous golf lawns on the same aquifer, with their automatic sprinklers that come on even when it rains. These wealthy pillars of the community are water and gas hogs. When the aquifers are depleted, they will bitch and moan, and buy more water. Oh the humanity!
I don't know what we would do. Let me put it another way: I don't know what we can afford to do under those circumstances.
I am not feeling hopeful right now. Usually gardening makes one hopeful. Remember when you were little and gardening was seen as therapeutic, because working with green, growing plants relaxed you, helped restore your sense of natural balance? Gardening in a biome, in steep decline doesn't relax you. It makes you mourn for something that isn't quite dead yet.
It stresses you out over the future. It makes you fret over things like the availability of water and food. It brings attention to the fact that animals are thirsty, just like the plants, and that they are over-heated and stressed too.
Watching the complete idiotic, shallow shit that seems to make headlines daily in this country, causes me to lose what little hope I have that we will ever come to our senses in time. In fact, I believe that time has come and passed us already. I have already *assumed the position. I am just anxiously, waiting.