April Showers Bring May Flowers to Rancho Relaxo….NOT TODAY!

I guess I should say, “NOT QUITE YET AND I AIN'T HOLDIN' MY BREATH!”. You see, this is central California. We don’t do rain here. In fact, I think I heard that it was against the law to rain here!

 

You need to understand that, when it does rain, it doesn't make things grow; it just makes a mess of things. That's why we lament a “40% chance of rain” forecast. Let’s put it this way: a 40% chance of rain here means that there is a 100% chance that there will be just enough rain trickling from the clouds to make a mud hole of your car. That’s right! It doesn’t rain enough to even wash the car of your Mulberry tree’s droppings (or the bird droppings for that matter)! UGH! You come out to your car and cast an eyeball on it only to find that you only see brown. You don’t actually see the color of the paint.

Head for the car wash? Hah! You can’t because there is a 30% chance of rain that night. In reality that means that there is a 110% chance of your car becoming a mud pie again.

 

It has rained so little that we don't have enough flowers around here to even feed the bees. Connie finally did purchase some really pretty Pansys, though. Other than that, the wildflowers are gone and the weeds are on patrol to see that nothing else pretty blooms.

All seriousness aside, we do need what little rain we get around here. Our annual rainfall is about the equivalent of a week’s worth of rain in Tulsa so things stay sort of dry. Did I say, “sort of dry”? I meant to say, sort of toasted. We go from what little green we get in the winter to “California gold” in just a couple of weeks when April hits.

I think tomorrow's rain (or, dribble), was late for the train because it usually stops raining in March and we don’t see wetness until we go swimming in the lake or until October gets here.

If that isn’t enough to lift your elevator to the top floor, just when we run out of cloud-supplied water, our irrigation ditch water is shut off for 6 weeks for its annual maintenance overhaul (a state wide practice). I haven’t looked into the matter very deeply but I wouldn’t be surprised if this is vacation time for the ditch tenders and the supervisors. After all, just tell me what can go wrong with a ditch whose only moving part is the water? It is never flooded so there are no breaches in it and it’s only 2 feet deep. Hrumph.

I mean…just how are we supposed to water our lawn and garden without utilizing our pump? We pay good money (well…it’s fake money so I guess it’s lousy money but at least the ink is dry) for our ditch water. They should at least let us use it once in awhile.

When they do turn the water back on, I’ll need to have all of my irrigation system overhauled and ready. My impulse sprinklers and hoses are a mess from last year so I need to get the bowling balls out of my pockets and pick up a bit of steam around here.

That’s hard to do (picking up steam). My steam generator isn’t really putting our much pressure lately. Seems about a bucket of steam is all I can come up with. Just thinking about it makes me want to relax and go let off what little steam I have somewhere near a trout laden river. *SIGH*. What is an over-weight middle-aged white guy supposed to do?

Connie’s has commenced planting the “Rancho Garden” (or the "Stay Alive Garden" if the US economy turns to dust before our eyes). We have our four above ground 8’ x 8’ boxes filled with compost. So far, most of the plants have survived the first few days of life. You laugh…but…..we have a perfectly good blueberry bush that was planted in this same compost last year and it has not grown so much as one inch! In fact, it has lost weight!

Not only that, all the corn harvested from our seven corn plants last year didn’t produce enough corn to keep a baby duck alive for two days. We did manage to get some over-the-winter lettuce. I thought that was cool. Now the stuff has gone to seed. Did you know that lettuce will grow to a height of about three feet?! I had no idea.

Anyway, the tractor can’t trac since I haven’t bothered to put the new battery in it. It’s a perfectly good tractor too. She’s a dandy, that “Ranch Rino”.  The trailer can’t trail because it’s full of stuff from last year. That means that the garbage cans are overflowing with …stuff. You know what I mean; that would be the stuff that the local dogs and wild animals have sifted through looking for lunch. It shouldn’t take long to clean up the mess.

The pickup can’t pick since the driver’s side rear tire is flat. That means that I hope that the big air compressor can do its job and press a bit. The little trailer needs to have its fender straightened. Seem someone wasn’t paying attention and pulled it into one of the poles in the pole barn and whacked it (if you were to spit and I didn’t duck, you’d hit the guy that did it). Thankfully, the guy that overhauled the trailer last year said he could fix it and it’d be like new. I guess I’d better bless his heart too.

The good news is that theToyota Camry is still Cam’ing and the Ford Freestar van is still van’ing so all is not lost. They are two really reliable vehicles and we appreciate both of them a lot. The van is actually a dump truck in disguise. We haul just about everything known to man in it and what we aren’t hauling with it we are storing in it. It’s loaded up most of the time.

Imagine the fun we have when we actually have to haul folks to church in it! Can you spell “Chinese fire drill”? Connie and I look like an acre of male monkeys fighting for one female monkey holding a banana when we’re hustling about trying to get stuff stowed so we’ll have room for passengers.

Just exactly what do you mean by asking, “What’s with the front lawn looking like it was only mowed once and that was last year”? You have not been paying attention. I mowed my lawn once this year too! I do need to attend to it, I suppose, now that people are coming to the door asking for permission to hunt game out there. Reckon I could rent them my machete? It’s not that the garden tractor doesn’t work. It’s just that the tractor driver doesn’t.

We did hire a young man to take the weedeater for a walk. He knocked down the really high stuff and I’m about to teach him how to drive a lawn tractor. After that, we should have the Ranch looking like a million….uh….like a….uh….couple of bucks.    

Things are really moving along at church. We finished the membership classes and are going to issue the certificates of completion this week. After that, we can vote everyone in and give them the right hand of fellowship according to the “Treatise” and by-laws and such.

Someone left an abandoned septic tank in the church parking lot for us to deal with 42 years later. Cousin Rod Sanders pulled his big Ford Excursion into place only to see the right front tire sag a bit. When he checked it out, he found an 18” hole in the ground. The ground is stone hard there so that’s what kept it from becoming a real show stopper of an event. We tossed a ¾” chunk of plywood over it. Today, we had the tank evacuated. If you can believe it, there was more than 1,000 gallons of residual water and material still in it! Can you imagine that?! After we get a permit from the city to dig a hole and to put dirt back into the hole we’ll dig the tank out and haul it off.

They are requiring a permit because they “want to see that you do it correctly”! Say what?! They want to see if we dig a hole and put dirt back in …correctly? If that isn’t insanity gone to seed I don’t know what is! It’s actually theft from the public under the guise of utilizing the “tracking a septic tank that is no longer there” ordinance. Some day I hope to have enough money to fight City Hall.

Stay tuned for more of the wonderfully un-exciting missed-adventures of the two head honchos of Rancho Relaxo, Connie and Randy. Adios, muchachos y hermanos y hermanas, y companeros, y compadres, y mas y mas.