Drought!

 

Is it too early to start worrying about drought?  Probably.  It rained two days ago and it's currently coming down in a nice drenching drizzle.  Still, the summer looms.  Even the thought of predicted rain not materializing can set me off.  I feel a bit like Jean de Florette, from the 1986 movie of the same title.  You may remember that Jean, played by Gerard Depardieu, is a 19th-century bourgeois romantic who takes his family from Paris to Provence to pursue his poorly-thought-out dream of raising carnations in the country.  Alas, two rustic Provencal scoundrels in the neighborhood decide to foil him by blocking up his only water source.  (spoiler alert) Jean's carnations dry up, he goes slightly mad, and he dies in a vain attempt to dynamite a new well.

I saw this film some 28 years ago, before I knew the difference between a carnation and carne asada, and even then it made a big impression on me.  Now, whenever we go two summer weeks without rain I get a little antsy, and within a month I start looking haggard.  Surely there must be a reliable water source somewhere in this blighted half-acre!  I start wondering whether to contact a dowser, though few have been seen in these parts since early in the last century. 

Granted, I have two 55-gallon rain barrels.  And since the Great Drought of 2012 I have put in as much drought-tolerant plant material as I can.  Zoyzia grass, which luckily I kind of like, is now spreading nicely across the yard, stopping wherever the direct sun doesn't reach it.  Heavy mulching with wood chips from my tree-cutting friend Andy holds back the dessication for awhile.  But ultimately, if the rain gods (and the vicissitudes of the new global climate) decide to make trouble, there's little remedy for it.  I'll either have to adjust my attitude, or start dynamiting.

Probably the former, though the latter might be easier.  I hate to see plants suffer and die.  More to the point, the loss of control we must face when dealing with nature is quite hard for me.  Gardening is indeed a salve to the soul, but it can also be crazy-making (see blogs on deer).  So many variables conspire to foil our best-laid plans, even without malicious French rustics (there's a great Simpsons episode based on Jean de Florette, by the way.  Bart is an exchange student in Provence and somehow ends up in the employ of these very same scoundrels.  Naturally, justice triumphs, and Bart learns French.)  So gardening, if we go the path of sanity, can be a great school for learning equanimity.  Enjoy the play, but let the universe (nature, God) be in charge.             

I'm still far from it, still too attached to my creations.  I try to keep in mind the Tibetan Buddhist ritual of the mandala, in which monks spend weeks creating a sand painting of astonishing complexity (itself highly symbolic of the inner and outer realms), and then dump it in the river to teach non-attachment and impermanence.  All is flux, all is flux.

                             

Interestingly, I don't fret nearly as much about excessive rain, which can be as bad for the plants as drought, and worse for some.  Somehow it doesn't capture my apocalyptic imagination the way drought does.  I imagine the future, this man-made future we are forcing upon a nature that left alone would keep us well, as more Mad Max than The Postman.  Mad Max, now there's another film that strikes a little too close to home...