East Texas Drought has some Windy Teeth

**Update April 26, 2011 -- Rain!!! This sandy hill had an inch and a half of thundering rain captured in the rain gauge last night, and this morning I did hear frogs croaking.  While they aren't there in our shriveled up pond in great numbers as in bygone days, enough are there you can hear their song.  The grass is miraculously greener today as well, and the cows are cleaner and much much happier, and so am I!!

Good Friday and Easter Sunday.....close your eyes and think of the first things that come to mind, reminisce about Easter's past, and not once will you recall hot, dry and dusty weather and wildfires -- at least not if most of those Easter's past were spent in Southeast Texas. 

J.West's Blossum, Summer 2010

It is so dry, so windy here that it is just plain scary.  We had a couple of days last week where the smell of wood smoke was so strong you just knew there was a fire close by that was headed out of control.  Turned out it was a fire pretty far south in the northern part of Hardin County, a whopping big 7000 acre fire being fanned by crazy winds.  The days the smell of the smoke reached all the way to this far northern tip of Tyler County were windy days indeed, and the direction of those winds sent the odor lingering in those enormous clouds of smoke right to our front doors. 

The pastures are bone dry, and disturbing the soil sends up swirls of white sand carried off by the winds.  The grass is dead and dying and today we started putting out hay again for the biggest part of the herd.  The poor cows desperately need a rain bath to clean up their pretty white fur, and at this rate the little ones will be months old before they even know what rain feels or sounds like.

Okay, I've depressed myself enough putting down in words how very very dry it is, and it could be that negative thinking might just perpetuate this worst nightmare Spring weather.   To counter that negativity, I found a youtube video of great rain sounds-- if you miss the sound of rain, listen up.



Maybe if we all think of rain together -- imagine the sounds from childhood of it falling and tapping on a tin roof, or conjure that sure sweet smell of a big rain coming when the air holds still and the sky is blackened, hear the mighty crashes of thunder, feel the chill down your spine when suddenly a breath of breeze moves across your skin that has a bite of coolness and a feel of newness.  Rain, the life blood of all that is new and fresh again when the season of Spring rolls around.  Okay, I'm opening up my eyes again . . . yeah, I do feel more hopeful that it will surely rain again . . . some day!

I imagine the frogs are hopeful, or have they headed for the nearest river by now?  There have been some spring nights here in the years past when the sound of frogs was like an entity of its own, an organism, a giant UCO (Unidentified Croaking Object).  I'd really like to hear the sound of frogs after a rain, you have to wonder just what happens to the poor frogs without the rain?