The Art of the Drought

I like to walk on cooler mornings at Glassberg Conservation Area on the beaten and sometimes challengingly muddy path around the pretty three-acre (man-made) lake I sometimes fished in, that I privately called my own Walden Pond, and last week was stunned to see the lake dried out to practically nothing, surrounded by a Missouri moonscape of cracked mud and dead water lily plants.

In this picture you can see from the orange gauge where the water level used to be.

The lake is a tenth or less than what it was! The former sky mirror that had a whole bunch of us (or at least one person every day) hiking in half a mile carrying gear to fish there! The dead trees stuck up from it like wooden knitting needles. Fish remain in the increasingly scarce, warm water--jumping, as if to say, "Save us!" The Department took down the sign warning anglers about the daily catch limits.

Barely recognizing it and not quite believing it I crunched my boots across the desert landscape close to what water is left.

Alternative Facts

Planted the amaryllis my neighbor gave me for Christmas, using nice potting soil to encourage it. And the bulb sat with its one yellow shoot pointing up, forever, for a month. Not growing or greening. The shoot's tip was dry and brown so I figured I killed it, or a mouse gnawed it, or it was a dud--the rare, one-in-every-10,000 dud amaryllis bulb (I am so centrally important to the universe that rare things happen to me).

The only direct sunlight in winter is in the morning, in the guest room/office, and I tried giving it light. At first I thought I was imagining it, but the yellow blade turned spring-green and grew. Temperatures rose into the 50s outside (global warming is a Chinese rumor to trick the United States out of manufacturing) and I sat it on the porch in a sunny spot on warm days and a blossom end formed and swelled into a pod. Up against a light you can see a shadow developing inside. This morning one side of the pod was split open about an inch. I peeked, trying to see what color bloom it has in there, but I'll have to wait.

P.S. Recently it was my birthday. Several people thought to give me crayons, coloring books, and toys. ("Divine is so lonely or crazy she needs these to fill her time.") Actually I see more people than ever and am working on the greatest project of my life, and so are you, and the amaryllis is an object lesson.

Snake Awake

I raised the garage door with some force, because it's solid wood, very heavy, and takes momentum as well as strength to thrust it up past the point where it will click into place. No problem. Then I see something moving.

It's in the tracks where the pulley wheels run. It's a snake.

OMG. Was it crushed? Is it dead? Half dead? What kind of snake? Is it angry? I can't see its head, only part of its belly. It moves for a while, and then stops.

I killed it. I didn't mean to! What are the odds a snake will be in that door track in a two-door, two-car garage, right at that moment? What a horrible death. I'm sorry!

Then I remember to take a photo.

It begins to move. Slowly it draws its latter half up and out of the mechanism. It's black on top, with a lighter belly, checkered white and light brown. It vanishes.

It's been winter so long I forgot that around this time, creatures are waking up. It was 75 degrees today. Please excuse that the photos aren't that clear. I was trembling.

December Flood

To everyone's surprise, it rained all day, after a beautifully warm and sunny Christmas Day, and by 4 p.m. today we who live here were flooded in by our usually tame little creek; that means no traffic in our out of our area. You see the LaBarque all acting up, and then Doc Sargent Road firmly underwater; as I stood there taking photos the water gained an inch. Continual rain makes Internet satellite contact intermittent, so I'm posting quickly and only now. Reports from the city and the freeway also say roads and dwellings are underwater, and evacuations are taking place in the suburbs. More to come. At least it waited until the 26th, and at least it's not snow.

Seasonal Fuzziness

Warm until February; snow and sleet in March: "Seasonal fuzziness" is what it's called by a Missouri Department of Conservation representative whom I heard speak about climate change (he said that he would not say "global warming" because that phrase was too  politicized). He said weather is drifting away from the calendar and our expectations because of man-made climate change. Yes, the weather is more and more confused; it's not a collective hallucination. Numerous outdoor events scheduled for March, when I'm often rhapsodizing about crocuses, have been snowed out, including a Mardi Gras dog parade ("Mardi Growl" -- everyone goes) in Eureka, and my planned jaunt to the back roads of  southern Illinois, inaccessible after a 7-inch snowfall. They rescheduled those events for April. Tonight it will be 0 degrees. This Saturday it'll be 52 degrees. LaBarque Creek (left), always pretty, looking like a poem, freezes and heats like a fever line.