The Letters P & H

Today's episode is brought to you by the letter  P and the letter H.   Why do we need the letters P and H?  H is a real easy one: easy to spell, easy to guess, but Hard to  endure.  H is for HEAT,  the watchword and defining element of this long difficult season.  HOT says Josh, pointing to my coffee cup or a saucepan on the gas range.  HOT is more than a feeling this summer; its a palpable substance that meets you through the door, batters you on the breeze and drains both energy and optimism from the sweat of your brow.

Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance............Samuel Johnson

That's why we celebrate the letter P.  P today is for Perseverance.  A long involved word of  multiple vowels with all the positives of persistence without the opprobrium of obstinacy.  A word with armor, shielded and immovable like a tortoise.  The kind of word one needs this summer, when each day is like its brother: bright, hard, shiny, brittle.  Fight fire with fire....102?  104?  Add a southwest wind?  I'll show you my perseverance, pull my hat brim down and pour a bigger glass of tea.  When all else fails, show bravado.

OK.  Maybe bravado isn't the most admirable of traits.  But if it raise the spirits, there are worse ones.

Don Quixote: A knight must not complain of his wounds, though his bowels be dropping out.

Here in farming country there has been remarkably little whining this dry season.  We've found our stiff upper lips,  if not our senses of humor.  Misery may love company, but we  look back to our parents and grandparents and find our strength in their character.  Those tales resonate; we have the photographs, the statistics, and even some of the storytellers still around to stiffen our backbones and lift our chins.  These are the days of which legends are made and ties are bound.  We are FAMILY; we have common cause; we survived, if not thrived, in the summer of 2012.


Romans 5:3-4   Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope




And that brings me back to the letter H.  H is not just for Hotter that H***.  St. Paul tells us hope is the natural harvest of our character.  As sure as the seasons, hope ripens from our character after perseverance follows suffering, a reassuring organic progression.  Just as lovely is Emily Dickinson's verse, one nurtured and polished in my memory like a gleaming gem.  Hope flutters, it shrugs off trouble like an unpleasant dream; it gathers itself and greets adversity with wordless song. When we are burdened  beyond bearing with no recourse in sight, we listen inside for the song of hope planted there by our Creator.   

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -.........Emily Dickinson

Tonight we looked to the sky where clouds blossomed and thunder rolled.  Tonight we listened and watched as rain drove the yellowed leaves from the sycamores and cars splashed through new puddles.  It wasn't a drought buster; it wasn't relief; it wasn't enough to unfurl leaves or green grass.

But it was the personification of Hope.






















This post is dedicated to family and loved ones who demonstrate to us the best of perseverance and hope.  

Dry County

I turn the sprinkler off just about the time the blister that is  the sun melts down behind the trees.  I'm rescuing the hostas under the sycamores and I stand for a few minutes just to hear the drops fall off the overhead leaves.  That's what a rain would sound like.

In the middle of the night, the air conditioner comes on in our bedroom.  Its soft whooshing through the vent wakes me and I think, half asleep, that it sounds like rain on the windows.

  This is what happens when you live in a dry county.

An early spring, a dry spring, does not necessarily lead to a dry summer: this is what the meteorologists told us again and again as the daffodils and crab apples bloomed before Easter and the peonies were drooping by Mother's Day.  Heat shut the door on spring and spoiled the first evenings with fireflies.  Those leisurely strolls and bike rides around the neighborhoods became races to beat the sunrise.

The corn was planted in record time by a record date.  Nothing to do but plant the beans shallow and hope a passing shower brought them up out of the dust.  Farmers run on hope and prayers, whatever the forecasters say.    Corn grows on its own internal computer, following the inexorable timetable of  its breeding.  'First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn shall appear', as the hymn proclaims.  Corn doesn't stick its tassel out and look for its shadow like the groundhog.  Corn says, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!  Our corn has been worthy of its expensive pedigree, remaining green and pretty long after topsoil moisture was gone, two and a half weeks after the last half inch rain.  Tassels emerged and pollen shed over the Fourth of July, the 5th and the 6th with temperatures of 100, 100,  and 102. We know what happened in 2011 when it was 100 degrees and wet.  We didn't talk about what might happen when the corn field is three digits and dry.  We are farmers.  Damn the torpedoes, its Independence Day; we shot our fireworks anyway.

Be realistic.  We live in the western Corn Belt. We were married in a drought year...1977.   In the 80s we suffered three droughts.  Four, if you count 1980 itself.  In the 2001 and 2002, we pumped the well dry for the first time  in March and hauled water for our greenhouse crops every day until September when we sold them.  The rains came in October.  We haven't had a crop failure due to drought since then.  Our land isn't worth $10,000 an acre for a reason.  And that reason is rain.

Be philosophical.  We are not alone in this one.  The land is dry everywhere in our state.  The land is dry, I hear tell, even in Illinois and much of Iowa.  The markets tell us so.

Be grateful.  Our wells are holding up.  We can still water the mums and the gardens.  We can still keep something pretty around us.  After a while, you have to develop tunnel vision.  Drive down the road looking neither left nor right at the crops turning white and the trees turning brown.  Summer does end and rain will fall.  Dust will settle.

Then we'll all toast the end of this dry county.