After 324 Days Of Drought, We Got A Pounding Rain!!!

Yes, it's TRUE! After 324 straight days of no rain, we finally got dumped on last night. All I could do was race around taking pictures of the rain, laughing hysterically and bawling my eyes out, for joy. 


I'm not sure if the rain came back from Seattle with me or if it was the passing of Mr. Snooty's closest living Aunt. Perhaps it was a little of both. It's been a rough week with all the family in town for the funeral, attending the viewing, making tons of finger sandwiches, the graveside service, the church service, and the loss of a lovely family member we will sorely miss.


Hopefully, I can get back into blogging when the dust finally settles. It's been a very long week.

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Things In Snootyville Are Really Looking Up..... Aside From No Rain

 I just finished making my new kitchen window treatments as well as re-covering the chair seats at the kitchen table. It took me forever to decide what style I wanted to go with and ultimately decided on a faux Roman shade with ties. I didn't have enough of the flowered fabric for the windows so I found some material with a subtle plaid that went perfectly with the flowered material, adding an extra piece of the flowered to kind of tie it all together. Frankly, I really am crazy about the results. I can't believe they look so great and I DID THEM WITH WITH ONLY A GLUE GUN & A STAPLE GUN. Yay me! Tell me what you think...
 

When our best friends bought their new house, they replaced all of the brand new ceiling fans and replaced them with some incredibly beautiful (modern retro) fans. When they said they were going to throw away the others is when I asked if we could have them and they were thrilled to not be throwing them in the trash. Today, the electrician came to install the 3 fans and I'm so thrilled with them I could almost cry. All 3 fans are Hunters which are the best, in my opinion. Now, after 25 years, we have new fans that look absolutely splendid and they only cost us the price we paid the electrician. How sweet is that?

 

On another note, we still haven't had ANY rain and it's 106 degrees as I write this. When I went out to water the plants today (which is becoming a daily requirement), I thought I was going to faint. This heat is miserable and it isn't even officially summer yet. Can we please have a collective "Ugh!"? I can't help but wonder when nature is going to take pity on us and shed some rain on our parched land. I'm just thankful that we have a water well or we'd be knee deep in doo-doo.....

Does Anyone Know How To Do A Raindance?

We may have lots of oil and natural gas in the ground here but what we don't have much of, is water. Last year, we were actually out of drought danger for the first time in many years. Go figure.


I've lived in this city for 35 years and have never once seen water rationing. That is, until now. We have not seen one single droplet of rain for more than six months, which means our reserves are dwindling quickly with no possibility of rain in sight. This means that new businesses looking to open here will probably take it to a city with more water available. With all of this weighing on the minds of responsible citizens, why is it that I am STILL seeing water standing in street curb wells all over town? Sigh. The world is indeed full of sheep and outright jerks. We certainly don't have a shortage of those around here.


Our neighboring city 20 miles away has already issued mandatory water rationing and penalties will begin next month for those who abuse the watering rules. Our mayor has pleaded with citizens to cut back before he is forced to put us on rationing as well. This effects local nurseries, sports fields, fire departments, golf courses and more. And, with all of the wildfires, we're running out of water even faster than anyone ever anticipated. The oil industry also needs water to perform the fracturing process, which now allows us to go back into shut down oil wells and bring up deposits of oil that we were unable to extract before this process was introduced.


Furthermore, there are oil wells literally everywhere out here in West Texas and when wildfires get close, those are the first to be put out. Otherwise, we'd be having monster explosions out the wazoo and it's really unthinkable what kind of damage that could do to our little corner of the world. So, much of the water reserves in both counties are already low from using it to put out those fires. And yet, the high winds and near 100 degree temperatures continue to wreak their special kind of havoc upon us. The last figures I saw were saying that over 90,000 acres have burned in West Texas thus far. One ranch alone has had over 30,000 acres burned and that fire was started by downed electrical wires (from the high winds).
 

After the hardest freeze this area has seen since the 1920's, ailing plants and trees barely hanging on are probably not going to make it. Luckily, we have a water well for watering outside, but we need to conserve it as well, since we don't know how deep it is or how long it will last us.



Now it's time for me to vent whine. Remember my beautiful Oleanders in the backyard?

Here's what that pair of Oleanders look like now. The green you see is the blasted trumpet vine trying to choke out an already deceased pair of shrubs. Nothing can kill that damned vine, trust me. It's as hearty as mesquite bush. Those Oleanders were like 15 years old but the cold got them anyway. Frankly, it didn't make me feel any better to see that most of the Oleanders around town are dead.

And remember how hard I worked on the front yard before Mr. Snooty's 40th high school class reunion last year? It looked so pretty until that freeze hit us in February. I had even moved the potted Hibiscus trees to the guest house for the winter. That turned out to be a wasted effort. The freeze took them too. However, one day when I was at Sam's Club they had the exact same size Hibiscus trees for $15.98 a piece, so I bought four. Yes!

At any rate, here's what it looks like now, along with a dead ornamental pear tree and the barely-hanging-on Oleander. Wah. Okay, I'm done whining but I don't feel any better as I leave to go search for a remote new nursery that claims to have Oleanders......