I guess the raindance combined with community prayers for rain had a positive effect. It’s rained for 3 days in a row–woohoo! Of course, it DIDN’T rain for more than 3 months in a row which is crazy. Every little bit helps I suppose. But very high winds are accompanying the rain which is knocking over some of our tomato, sunflower and squash plants. Not so worried about the squash (see previous post 
), but please, NOT the tomatoes!
We’ve noticed that this area is like a wind tunnel. Since we moved here last June, we’ve had pleasant breezes most days and serious gales many days. Keeps the gnats and mosquitoes at bay, but what about the plants? I guess I have to stake them or put up a windscreen or both. I’m also noticing that the winds mostly come from the same direction, so perhaps re-working our garden rows so the plants protect each other. Wish I’d considered it sooner. Wish I’d even thought to consider it, but like most things we’re dealing with, I had no clue. All the book reading in the world can’t come to actually doing. And then when you actually DO, you forget half of what you read.
Speaking of reading, I started “Tobacco Road” last night by fellow Georgian Erskine Caldwell. I made it through maybe 30 pages and then started to get a bit freaked out and had to put it down. If you haven’t read it, it’s about poorer than poor sharecroppers who have lost everything. It’s tragic, comic and disturbing, but amazingly insightful into how people were forcibly moved from the natural world to the man-made world. Those who didn’t go “willingly” were destroyed. I think I’ll read and share more of that another time. In the meantime, I’ll put my rain-dancing-shoes away for now.