[gardeners] Rambling rain
Matt Trahan (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Sun, 05 Jul 1998 01:18:03 -0400
YEEESSSS!! It's finally raining!! It started out slowly about a half hour
ago, now it's going smooth and strong. Hopefully it will last all night!
And the next 5-6 nights, sigh.
We have been drier than I realized. Stopped by a friends house yesterday.
He has a 1/4 acre pond that is also a drainage pond for his immediate area.
I was shocked to realize it was down a foot and a half from my visit 3
weeks ago! I came back home and took a closer look at my own yard. I've
been checking and watering the container gardens faithfully, as usual, but
I usually let the regular garden do it's own thing. Wrong answer!
The lacecap hydrangea's are in vertical droop (in spite of 2-3 long hand
waterings in the past 3 weeks) The ajuga in one bed is almost crispy, the
dwarf shasta daisies are in vertical droop, and the bishops weed is lying
on the ground!
Been putting off topping up the 1000 gallon koi pond again for more than a
week. Added 250 gallons this morning to bring it up full.
My mother in law and I were discussing some of the legal hassles of
minor(?) weather modification this afternoon.
1. Assuming there's only a finite supply up in the air, who gets it? Areas
that are normally wet, but not this year? Would marginal rain areas out
west bloom lushly if you engineered dumping enough water on them? Since
they are on the "upstream" side, would they be able to get away with it
legally?
2. What would silver nitrate laced rainwater do to your "organically
grown" certification? Would you even want it on regular commercial food crops?
3. Frost dates- would modifying them make the "Weather Corps" legally
liable for their inability to forsee/control huge airmasses?
Remember, we're talking minor mod's. I doubt we could make North Dakota in
winter seem like summer in Florida, but we could easily make some minor
adjustments in rainfall.
Remember when some of the growers in Florida wanted to try sueing the
weather FORECASTERS(!) for not predicting a 'salvagable' frost late last
spring?
4. (I initially hit the $ key instead of the 4 key, but $$$ will likely
have a say as well) Will some of the natural disasters in the past year
be enough to push the legislature to even consider this potentially huge
"can of worms". Anyone seen Pandora lately?
What brought this subject up was our previous weeks forecasts. Lots of
"possible afternoon thunderstorms" but no rainfall. There were several
times when I thought sure it would rain, but nothing. I'm assuming a gentle
nudge would have been enough to dump plenty of needed rain. My folks up in
Massachusettes would have been glad to do without it!
Hope everyone in Florida is ok and able to get things back to normal soon!
Our prayers are with you.
Matt Trahan <matttrahan@ecsu.campus.mci.net>
USDA zone 8, AHS heat zone 7, Sunset zone 31, northeastern N.C.