“The dry seasons in life do not last. The spring rains will come again.”
Last night’s storm was classic, right out of an old mystery novel. The thunder rumbled, the lightning lit up the night and the rain poured. If I were living in a decrepit mansion, I’d expect to see a dead body in the library. It rained a long time. I am a lover of storms.
My dance card is nearly empty this week. If I didn’t have uke and my usual dump run, I’d have nothing listed, but I don’t really mine. The summer will be busy enough.
When I was a kid, this time of year went slowly. I could barely wait for summer vacation, but I had to suffer through final exams before that happened. I still remember one final because it was peculiar. It was music, and it had a section on Gregorian chant. I still don’t know why. Never in my life have I been asked to read the notes in Gregorian chant.
Where I lived in Ghana was the driest part of the country. It didn’t rain for months. The roads turned dusty. Riding anywhere meant being covered in dust and even tasting it. Nothing grew. The fields were empty. The brown stalks of corn and millet had been burned. I remember the days of smoke as the fires moved across the fields. The water was turned off a few days a week, but I was ready. I filled all of my water bottles ahead of time and kept them in the fridge. I had buckets I used to fill, and I’d line them up in the shower for my nightly bucket baths. I became an expert at taking a bucket bath. I’d even have leftover water to flush the toilet at the end of the day. Food choices in the market were limited. Some tomatoes were grown through irrigation so I could always find them and usually onions. I also ate yams, tuber yams which looked a bit like tree trunks. My heels and lips cracked. I walked on my tip toes. The heat was extraordinary, but it was dry which made it bearable. I’d go to bed wet after my shower or my bucket bath. It was the best way to fall asleep in the heat. I became an expert in dry season survival.
keepthecoffeecoming.blog 
May 28, 2024 at 5:37 pm
Hi Kat,
I was awakened at 5:30 in the morning by thunder, wind, and rain. Shortly thereafter, our power went out along with the cable TV and the internet. When I went to work I had to disconnect my garage door opener to get my car outside. The street and my front lawn was strewn with leaves and small branches as I drove in a steady rain shower. The main thoroughfare was strewn with a lot of very large tree branches. My next door neighbor’s tree in their front yard was felled from the storm. Yesterday evening we had a thunderstorm move through accompanied by pea sized hail. Less than a mile further south the storm dropped tennis ball size hail stones. Our power came back on at around 11:00 this morning followed shortly by the cable and the internet. Until we have a power outage, we don’t realize how much we depend on electricity and the internet.
May 28, 2024 at 9:00 pm
Hi Bob,
That was quite a storm. We did not have the wind so nothing fell and no electrical blackouts. Because I don’t have a garage, I never thought about the electric door.
I can imagine what your lawn and the street must have looked like strewn with leaves and branches as that happens here as we often get heavy winds. I lost a giant pine tree from the front yard during one snow storm. I was lucky it didn’t hit anything when it fell. The trunk split.
We seldom get hail, and the last one I remember had the tiniest hail it did no damage. My sister in Colorado has had to replace her roof twice because of hail.
The worst time to lose electricity is in the winter. It doesn’t take long for the house to get cold.
You are so right about our reliance on electricity.