Monsoon!
As I gaze out the window a line from a Led Zeppelin tune keeps running through what’s left of my mind:
“If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break,
If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break,
When The Levee Breaks I’ll have no place to stay.”
If you look closely you’ll see our darling daughter’s smiling face in this frame. The quality of the shot could be much better but please bear in mind that it was shot through two windshields (windscreens to those of you of the Brit persuasion) and a downpour. Adding to the challenge was the necessity of trying to trip the shutter between the sweeps of 2 sets of windshield wipers.
The smile on that face is the result of Momma and Daddy agreeing to add her sat TV/ Internet/ landline phone service to our account. This means she’ll have all of the above installed and functional next Thursday. Since she has no established credit history it would take much longer and cost far more to put it in her name because of security deposits and installation fees. Frankie and I are established customers so all that has been waived. We’re more than happy we could help with the red tape.
Besides, we really like to see that smile!
On our journey to town today I finally remembered to get a shot of what I think is an old root cellar on 4th Street. If there’s anything stored in there I hope it’s in water tight containers because I’m sure it’s floating by now. There is no door!
The branch (pronounced brainch in these parts) at the bottom of our street isn’t out of it’s banks…..yet….. but it is rising. We’ve been under flash flood watches and warnings for the best part of the past two days and they remain in effect until tomorrow. Being on high ground I won’t start worrying about flooding until I see ol’ Fish Hook (my brother in law) paddling past in an inner tube. All this rain is due to the remnants of Tropical Depression 5 (TD5) and another storm front behind it that is moving in from the Midwest.
Speaking of branches, Burd Town lost a 20 footer last night and it is lying out in our front yard. If the rain ever stops THE BOSS and I will have to break out the Sawzall™,cut it free and then into manageable pieces and haul it up to the tree line.
NOTE: No burds or feeders were damaged in this incident. Sawzall™ is the brand name of a reciprocating saw produced by the Milwaukee Electric Tool Company. These saws are also produced by several other companies and sawzall has become the generic name for this type of tool among tradesmen, no matter who makes it.
One thing all this rain is good for is the green stuff. After Halloween Frankie set Laura’s Jack-O- lantern in this then empty flower bed until we could dispose of it. Apparently a few seeds fell out because this pumpkin plant sprung up a few weeks ago and is now growing like crazy. It has a blossom on it but I doubt it will have a chance to produce a very large fruit before the killing frost arrives. On the other hand, you never know……….. Those seeds survived the #%&@!!! ton and a half of snow we had last winter.
We shall see.
BOHICA!
That was a term I became very familiar during my years of exposure to the Canoe & Seagull Club, also known as the United States Navy. I managed to avoid becoming a Squid (civilian term for sailors also known as Swab Jockeys, Rust Pickers, Anchor Clankers and various other terms I cannot repeat) by enlisting in the United States Air Force as soon as my draft notice arrived in the mailbox. However, growing up a Navy brat (both Mom and Dad were sailors, Dad a lifer) and later working for the Navy as a Civil Service employee you can’t help but pick up a few things. One I picked up was that word, actually an acronym standing for Bend Over Here It Comes Again!
This term was nearly always employed when one of those khaki clad idiots (officers) wandered near and caught the non-khaki idiots (enlisted men) lollygagging or goofing off in civilianspeak. I picked up a lot of other words, many at a very young age, but cannot repeat most of those, either. I’m still leery of Mom and getting my mouth washed out with one of those bars of US Navy issue soap that “followed my dad home from the base” every time I threw the old one away.
I took a look at the local weather radar a few minutes ago and the second thing that came to my mind was BOHICA! The first thing was an obscene reference to what the radar image is doing to my plans to mow the lawn. I haven’t mowed since we got back home from vacation, thanks to a similar weather situation every day since we returned. It has now been exactly 2 weeks since I last toured the grounds on the Dandelion Destroyer, spreading our proprietary formula lawn fertilizer which has it’s own acronym, DOGS. I tell people that stands for Direct Organic Gardening System but it actually refers to a special product that is the direct result of owning the best fed Labrador retriever in the county. That dog eats better than most of the people in the county!
The grass has been deeper before but is rapidly approaching record breaking status. It could have been worse. The last time I failed to mow for two solid weeks we almost lost Sam when he took off after some sort of critter and disappeared from sight in the foliage. I guess having him with us on vacation accounts for the unusually slow growth this time but we still have the greenest lawn on Pine Ridge.
Anyway, if anyone happens to have a few goats they would like to trade for a garden tractor I’ll sweeten the deal with a nearly new Toro self propelled mulching mower and a Shindaiwa weed whacker if you’ll agree to deliver the goats. Any interested parties should not delay in contacting me or you’ll also need to bring a metal detector to find the lawn equipment.
Now I’m off to mount the pontoons on my truck, get Sam into his snorkel and mask and shut this thing down before it gets fried by a lightning strike. I guess this will be another one of those old school evenings when I spend my time with a book. I sure am glad Dr. Seuss put a lot of pictures in his books or I’d have a terrible time following the plot in some of them!
