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What the Rains Brought

© Carol Wallace

Summer was a desert. Cracked, dry soil yielded little that gave pleasure; seeds dropped to earth and lay there, unnourished and unborn. Green began to seem like a mirage.

And then came rain. A little at first - enough that the edges of the great brown patch that we used to call lawn began to take on a bit of softness. Plants perked up, flowers that had been puny stood up straighter and fuller. You could almost hear a sigh ripple across the earth. But the earth was a giant sponge that absorbed the moisture and held it deep within itself. The cracks reappeared. Breezes created dust, which went dancing through the air and into unwary eyes. It seemed that the tears this brought might be the only moisture we would get.

And then came Floyd.

Floyd wasn't just rain. Floyd was a deluge. The creek at the bottom of the hill became a raging torrent of water which spilled over and flooded the streets. Had Floyd been a snowstorm, they calculated that we would have been under nine feet of snow. Drifting snow that might have well enveloped small houses, given the blasts of wind that whipped through the trees. Instead, the created small walls of water, and tore great hunks of branches off of living trees.

And then, the next morning - sunshine.

For one day there was moist soil - the kind that weeds lift out of with only a gentle tug. And weeding brought surprises. The stipa, that ornamental grass with blades so fine they are like silky hair, I had thought dead - but suddenly a tuft shot up and sought the sunlight. And all the while I weeded I found baby stipas everywhere. I want to plant a mass of them, so that when the sun shines through them it will be like viewing a field of flaxen hair with luminous split ends. Or a bed of spun sugar.

Caladium bulbs that had not appeared thus far suddenly thrust their pointy noses through the soil and unfurled minute, colorful leaves.

The autumn colchicum, 'Waterlily" didn't appear at all last year; I feared I had sliced it into oblivion trying to plant a groundcover of lemon thyme - but yesterday it sprang up with and presented me with two flowers.

The osteospermum had ceased to bloom, even with careful deadheading - but suddenly it was covered with blue-centered daisies. Miraculously, the Campsis radicans that has never bloomed in the eight years it has been hogging the arbor burst open into masses of colorful orange trumpets that acted as a siren call for hummingbirds. Salvias and veronicas suddenly put forth new spikes that promise to be flowers. And the brugmansias in their pots survived the battering and put forth even more blooms.