Well, it didn't say "Rain" in the forecast yesterday. It said "72 and Sun," which is why I left my tools and sundry others out last night. It started raining around 5AM and bugger! Damned if we didn't get more rain in an hour and a half than we did all last weekend in the projected Storm Of The Century! (Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Film.)

I love a good rain, actually. I love the sight of it, the smell of it, the sound of it at night as you lay in bed pondering the events of the day. What I don't love is the rust it leaves on the tools. Oh sure, most of my tools are stainless steel, but there are those few small parts that have just that bit of iron in them that when they get even slightly damp, my vast work environment takes on a burned and bloodsoaked crime-scene look to it by noon. How uninviting.

The weather's been quite nice, however, and I made it through yesterday without drinking 6 liters of Gatorade, but I was crestfallen at the sound of water dripping off the fascia this morning. It got me out of bed, though it didn't shake me awake enough to get outside and put a tarp over everything, unfortunately. I just stood there at the window with my mug of coffee, staring out at the mess in the rain. That's when the sprinklers came on.

Looking at the weather report now, it still says "72 and Sun" but it is reporting "Rain" in Oceanside. Thank you. Of course, it's not actually raining now, no, the sun is peeking through the clouds. I heard on the news the other day that the Water Company was going to start sending out notices to its customers asking them to start cutting back on their water usage. My immediate thought was to increase the sprinkler duration out on the landscape, so a month from now, when I cut it back to normal, my water bill would reflect that I had actually cut back my usage. Then I thought that this would be an unsavory act, so I let it go. Now, it's raining and the sprinklers are on. Well, it's not my fault! I read the weather reports!

I wonder how many unsavory people out here in SoCal actually did increase their water usage at the announcement. I mean, America's Finest City has to keep its lawns green, right? And, I do swear, every time I see announcements like this, I'm driving down the freeway that afternoon and some sprinkler head has broken off up the embankment and it's blasting Old Faithful into the number 2 lane. Does the ice plant really need to be watered, anyway? I understand it's a succulent, thereby lessening the need for water in dry times. I used to live in Arizona. All the freeways out there are lined with rocks, gravel, and cactus, and in some areas it's landscaped rather attractively. Anyway, I'm sure the mayor's house is xeriscaped to the property lines.

Most of my sprinkler heads are broken, anyway. It seems they launch the water into the air and then the stuff evaporates before it hits the grass, which lays there agape, yawning up at the sun begging for a drop. I figured I'd wait until after Christmas to fix it, as the whole landscape needs to be overhauled (or underhauled, as the case may be) and I hate to do a patch job on something I'm just going to tear out anyway. Also, the campaign against the ants continues, and I can stand the dryness more than they can. (I think.)

Speaking of dry, unwatered landscapes, the neighbor house remains unsold and there is not a green thing left around it, thus reducing the property's value all the more. A year ago the sodded owner sodded the whole sodded backyard in an attempt to sell the sodded thing and it looked beautiful from my upstairs bedroom. Now the bank owns it, I suppose, and they're no good at upkeep. Imagine all the foreclosures around SoCal right now, and how all these homes, with no one in them, are just condemning themselves with the slow smokeless burning of decay.

But think of how much water we're saving! (I'll take his.)

P.S. In the previous post I used the term "poofta". Definition follows.