June 10, 2001--
At last we are getting some much needed rain. For the past two days, this weekend, in other words, we've been under gray and wet skies. Ordinarily I would have been depressed at such a thing (OK, weather's weather). Gray skies has that affect on me. That's one of the reasons Melissa and I left the wonderful town of Ann Arbor Michigan in 1998, the bleak gray skies of Michigan's interminable winter was getting harder and harder to bear. Since we didn't join the packs to the ski slopes (I hung up my skis years ago when it became just too expensive-plus going alone is a bore) or the snowmobile trails we became indoor-dwellers to escape the slush and frigid white wasteland which is known as winter.
But the past 6 or 8 weeks or more of no precipitation has taken its toll on lawn and garden of coastal Georgia. I put water on the flowers around the front of the house but not the grass like so many of my neighbors have. We are a few miles from the Atlantic Ocean but that H2O wasn't doing us any good; it had to fall from the skies. And it would not.
But just as my brother Greg and his lovely wife Frinee and their beautiful kids were putting the finishing touches on their travel plans to Fort Walton Florida the waters of sky and surface were conspiring to stir up a huge fuss all around them in Houston. They had a blast in that vacation spot last year, the western panhandle of Florida is reportedly a wonderful beach spot. In fact Melissa and I have reserved a 3 day vacation sometime during the next year at Destin which is a mere few miles from Ft. Walton. We tried to make arrangements to be there the same time Greg and family were. That would have been a lot of fun, and even the Texas Schneider's betrayed indications they thought it was a good idea too. Melissa and I both had clear vacation ability but no hotel had room to slide us in. It turns out that was OK for us since the churning up of the Gulf of Mexico was causing near riot with the residents of the coast from the Houston area to New Orleans and eastward. Deaths have been reported resulting from the severe flooding in Houston. And still the rains continue. Greg's plan was to drive from their Houston area home around Sunday, June 3rd and spend the week in Florida. I can only hope and pray they were able to have some dry spells and somehow salvage their week of intended relaxation. Greg should email soon with news.
As for us in Savannah, the showers continue and are a blessing. We are still a few inches behind the precipitation level required to hit our average, but this helps greatly. The farmers are desperate, the fire fighters in south Georgia are grateful for this aid as those wild fires are still blazing after these many weeks, and now our lawns are turning green once more. I will have to dust off the lawn mower in a day or two after the grass dries. But that's something I will gladly do. As long as we don't get flooding like our Texas relations must wade through.