If it rains any more, we will need a vacation, preferably to Oman. I hear it never rains there, and the locals who have money take trips to Burma in typhoon season just to feel the stuff falling on them. I will swap houses with an Omani for a month, cheap. Just feed the dog, please.

When I first moved to Dallas, and for about the first five or six years thereafter, there was a three-week period twice a year when it rained pretty much nonstop. "Jungle rot weather" I called it, and I felt miserable. Of course, I didn't have a lawn then.

But some time in the late 1990s, the rains dried up. The summers seemed to get hotter. After I obtained a lawn, a drought commenced. Burn bans, rationing, etc. I wondered where the jungle-rot period went.

As you've probably heard, it is back in North Texas with a vengeance. We've been fortunate not to suffer any flooding here at Rittenhouse, but I haven't dared to look in the crawlspace. When the two-foot-deep water-meter hole out by the curb is brimming, that tells me all I need to know about what's under the house. No need for a dipstick, but it'd give the neighbors a laugh to see me using one.

I arrived home yesterday to find the whole family on the sidewalk, playing in the rain. Why not? It was warm, the water fresh, and the kids don't care. Too many hours in the house, anyway.

Everything outside is green, lush, fertile. Such a contrast to the winters around here, when the grass turns brown and stubbly and the trees go stark and sclerotic against the pale-blue sky.

We haven't had rain like this in years. I like the green, most of all. It's the color of life on earth.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 05:30 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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