On Spring, Weather and Poetry
Spring has finally sprung and I am a new girl! Ahhh, finally, the cowl of winter has been lifted. The dreary drab of cloudy and cold drizzle is about to be replaced by booming thunder and flashes of bright sky. It doesn't thunderstorm here in the same way as it does in Texas and Oklahoma which I miss. On the other hand, it does actually rain here instead of just making a lot of noise and huff for no result, which I enjoy. (Plus, bonus not quite as many tornados -- close, but not quite.) So, while we don't get the crystal clear late nights where you can watch the heat lightening off in the distance knowing it's over in the next county, we do get the enjoyment up here of putting plants out on the deck knowing that nature takes care of its own. For a few months of the year it's just cool enough and rains enough to have a porch garden without too much effort. Only in high summer does it get so hot that I have to take a bucket of water down to the potted herbs.It's almost past time for me to be buried in fiction. Last night I finished the most recent Jasper Fforde novel (more on that later) and started a book of poetry that I'm long overdue to return to a friend. The poetry, by the way, is by former Kansas and Oklahoma poet B.H. Fairchild. Now living in California, Fairchild grew up the son of a machinist and oil well worker out in Liberal, Kansas. That's pretty close to home for me -- Seward County is the next county over from Texas County, Oklahoma --and it's been wonderful to read his visual accounts of growing up in the same sort of small town in the 1950s including the people, the weather, and the landscape -- drilling rigs included.
So, greetings to summer. I'll be taking my nose out of a book soon and enjoying more evenings outside (although, it gets dark so early here in the summer, I have to work at it). Here's to coming home tonight, dodging the expected evening rain, opening a bottle of summer wine, and getting the herbs all in and potted. Ahhh, spring!
posted by braingirl @ 7:46 AM
1 Comments:
Ya know, Dr. ER and I fancy ourselves amateur storm followers; we try not to get close enough to call it "chasing."
Once last spring, we saw a dry line linin' up, oh, somewhere around Fort Supply, and drove to Shattuck and saw a beautiful set of thunderheads. We tuned in, in the truck, to local radio, which, out there, apparently, means Kansas. Then, we eased on in behind the line as it headed east.
Made me think of a trio of cowboys on good cutting horses easin' a handful of calves into a pen. The closer we got back to OKC, the more rambunctious the storms got, until at a convenience store in El Reno, we thought we could hear the sirens at the next town, which mighta been Piedmont or Yukon or OKC.
Then, we heard on the radio -- for hours playin' TV Channel 4 out of the city -- that the damn thing had dropped a tornado and it was within 4 miles of the house. Turned out that that was as close as it got.
Now, where I grew up, and when, 4 miles seemed like forever; nowadays, holy crap, I know every neighborhood by name, damn near, for 4 miles in every direction of my house (occupational hazard.)
We were so worried that our standard-issue stockade fence was blown down and our poor doggies had escaped.
Any hoo, they were OK. ... We are sooo ready to go storm following, with cameras. Again!
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