Briefly Raining

THE RAIN which mercifully soaked my lawn in the hours before sunrise was to me a great blessing, but soon after sunrise it moved out. The temperature would soon climb to nearly a hundred, More rain was predicted for the next day in this middle of July, and may it blessedly manifest. It almost seems a certainty that a summer drought will take the place of regular rain, and regular rain is a necessity in an area dominated by deciduous forests. Last summer we had not one but two prolonged droughts, punctuated by a short spurt of rainy days. There is an ominous sense that a repeat performance is on the way, for this summer, and for many summers to come. Eighteen summers ago, when I bought about half an acre of land and built a modest home, I, in a fit of arborial enthusiasm, planted more than twenty saplings and filled the yard with nacsent shrubbery. My hope was for a suburban future replete with bucolic wonder, azaleas included. The saplings grew into towering oaks and maples, the shrubbery prolifrated into large, overgrown bushes. The thick field of bermuda grass which I found when I started was, over the years, supplanted with a veriety of grasses, some of which thrived, while some did not. Amazingly, the azaleas srtll remain. This is perhaps due to my having refrained from installing gutters on the roof; the rain is not carried away into the corners of the property, but pours diretly down upon them, when they are lucky enough to receive rain. The trees and shrubs are greedy with the available ground water. I fear for the future of my lawn, and all lawns. I have already decided to do no more tree and shrub planting, and to not try to replace them as they age and die.It may eventuate that my now verdant but once barren yard returns to its previous state, a field of thick bermuda browning in the hot mid summer sun, bereft of other foliage. Or it may be that that this property one day returns to its still earlier state, a construction site wasteland, with glass and metal shards scattered among thick patches of crab grass. Our rolling hills, covered with thick forests, might one day transform into fields of grass, a prairie land where the land is nourished by scant rain sufficient only to sustain tall grasses with a few wildflowers. As for our cities, the increasingly bizarre patterns of extreme weather will bring violent storms, torrential rain, and tornados into their midst. The rising oceans will inundate and eventually engulf them, despite our best efforts to remove them from danger, back, and out of the way. And it may be that, as Bertolt Brecht wrote in a poem: "Of our cities there shall remain but the wind that blew through them.