Spring has come to the Crawford place. I got home from work one evening, and Bill had mowed the yard; he just couldn’t stand it any longer.
A red wasp sent me scooting off the deck over the weekend, so that’s a sure sign of spring, as are my splitting headaches, runny eyes and stuffy nose.
We are once again headed into the growing season a little dry. I hope we don’t have a repeat of the last couple of years with dry conditions continuing into the summer and fall. April showers may bring May flowers, but we need rain year-round.
The last couple of years, when someone complained about the rain, when it did rain, I tried to remind them that everything depends on rain.
Most of the Earth’s surface is covered in water, but it is 97 percent salty sea water, so we must have the rain and snow to support the hydrologic cycle, which supports life on the planet. We can, however, do without the severe weather some folks have suffered through in the Ozarks recently.
The need for Mother Nature to bless us with rain is the same around the world, and folks have long worried about not getting enough of it.
The website Chabad.org states that the Jewish people have been praying for rain each December for 1,000 years, and will continue until the year 2100. In the ancient land of Israel, rain was life-and-death concern. A good rainy season meant a good harvest and ample drinking water, while a drought could be fatal to livestock and cripple the economy. Times and locations may have changed, but the concern over the lack of rain remain the same.
Unless it comes a toad strangler for two weeks at a time, I will not complain about rain, but I have come close.
When Bill and I were getting married, we planned an outdoor reception. The day before the big day, it stormed for hours. As the vendors finally arrived in the late afternoon to set things up, I worried they were going to get stuck trying to set up the tent, and since everyone was parking in the pasture for the reception, I figured we were going to have a few cars hung in the mud.
We were hot and dry that June, and the sun-scorched ground quickly soaked up the water that fell from the sky. By that evening, we had no trouble pulling trailers around to set up in the pasture. (Yes, we used flatbed trailers for a bandstand and for dinner. We had a bounce house at the reception for the kids and some adults who thought they were kids.)
On the day of the wedding, the sky was clear, no one got stuck in the mud, or the bounce house, and I everyone had a great time.
According to the Farmer’s Almanac, summer will come early this year, just as spring did, and could bring some of the hottest temperatures on record to some areas. The Missouri/Arkansas line is predicted to be the boarder for the sizzle, with Missouri being a little cooler and having a little more rain than Arkansas. There are a lot of folks who put a lot of faith in the Farmer’s Almanac, but I hope it turns out to be an exceptionally mild, wet summer.
And remember, rain is a good thing.
Julie Turner-Crawford is a native of Dallas County, Mo., where she grew up on her family’s farm. She is a graduate of Missouri State University. To contact Julie, call 1-866-532-1960 or by email at [email protected].
