Shower of Rain

I kid thee not, 3/8 inch of rain Tuesday evening.  Dangedest thing I ever saw.  A little cloud came up out of the north and gave us a  nice little shower as we ate dinner.  ‘course Joyce couldn’t just sit back and enjoy it like me.  She had to dance all over the kitchen and living room worrying about that silly Max dog getting wet.  I wanted to jerk a knot in her tail but I realized her protective instinct might come in handy in my dotage so I just ignored her and enjoyed this freak of nature.  Don’t try to tell me prayers always go unanswered.

Speaking of answered prayers, the neighbors got home safe and sound Tuesday evening from their trip to Switzerland.  Even Jill and her crew sans Dave showed up on our doorstep.  We took them in, of course, and were glad to do it.  Don’t see near enough of them.

Today I trimmed the limbs off the two dead spruces I mentioned in a previous post.  I guess I’ll take down the trunks another day.  Just trimming the limbs plus some dead ones on other trees in the same general area, loading them in the pickup and hauling them out to the chipper site  gave me about all I wanted on an afternoon when it hit 101 degrees.  Cousin Ken Krabbe called me Friday.  He said they are hot and dry (Hot Springs, Arkansas), mabye even worse than us.  He said they are beginning to lose trees.  Cutting the dead spruces I thought about what it would be like to live in a forest of them.  These were as dry as tender.  Hot Springs is in a forested area.  I wonder if fire is a hazard.  We don’t hear about grass fires this year in our area.  I guess anything that could burn, burned last year and we haven’t had enough moisture to grow it back.  It’s logical that the biggest fire danger is during a dry spell right after a wet spell.  I think Ken is seven years older than me.  He talked about ’51-53 when there was no rain in our area.  He remembered working with his dad using a rake behind a tractor to rake the dirt that drifted along the fence row so high the cattle could walk across the fence.  I’ve read about the dry spell in the early 1890’s that wiped out most of the cattle ranchers in the Texas Panhandle so droughts, or drougths  as Ken calls them, are nothing new.

Little Vivy came down with a case of strep throat Thursday evening.  Nicole came by after leaving the office and made the diagnosis.  She gave Jill a prescription and the next day Vivian was feeling much better.  I told Nicole I wasn’t feeling all that great myself and maybe she ought to check me over but she wouldn’t do it.  Still it’s nice to have a doc that will make house calls even if she is sort of selective.