In all likelihood, Van Horn's precipitation count for 2006 will top 10 inches this week, making this a very wet year for us. While we don't like to say this in the company of ranchers, some of us admit to muttering under our breath, "Quit raining, already! I want some sun!" Our clandestine whining is inappropriate, for we know that rain now means beautiful wildflowers in the spring. And some of us haven't been here in the rough years, when the annual rainfall has been less than 3 inches...and some years not at all.
What I'm trying to grasp is this: an understanding of what rain will do here. Spending almost all of my life near corn and soybean fields and being an enthusiastic garderner, I have an innate sense of how an inch of rainfall translates into the number of worms appearing on the sidewalk, the rise of the river, or the growth of corn and basil and bachelor buttons. In my bones I'm realizing, is an understanding of rain in the growth of I don't know how many species. How many times do we look out the window on a rainy day and say, "this will be good for the crops"? And on a simple walk around the block, how many thoughts pass through your mind almost unconsciously like, "gee, that rain last night really did wonders for the hostas"? But our knowledge is far richer than that. After a lifetime in the midwest I know the plants deeply. I know when they need rain and when they don't like it. I know how to amend the soil for different sections of the garden. I realize now this is something I have to learn over from scratch.
The soil is part of my problem. I have always loved the deep black soil of Illinois and Iowa--so much so that both times I moved to Texas (the first was in 1980 and I spent five years here) I brought with me a small glass jar of it. I'll confess to opening it up from time to time to get a whiff of it and remember the scent of home. I understand how an inch of rain will soak into this black stuff.
But the soil of the desert is different. When wet, the scent is incredible--smelling impossibly clean and herbal. But it doesn't really soak in the rain much. Water glances off. Flood in the desert is common in years like this. The highway leading from Van Horn to the Guadalupe Mountains National Park washed away last week. The state highway department put filler in there to build up a temporary road, and that washed away too. The combination of the runoff from the mountains, and the soil's reluctance to soak in a lot of moisture makes our monsoon season vexing.
When I first arrived, I wondered why Van Horn has an earthen flood retention wall built around it, but now I know, it needs it being so close to Turtleback and Six Mile Mountain. Charley, Shanna's boyfriend lost his boyhood home and ranch in the great flood of the 60s out east of town. The mud adobe walls were not protected from the path of several feet of water and they just melted away.
In time, I'll learn the native species. Their quirks and life cycles and how they react to an inch of rain will become as second nature as my understanding of lilacs or asparagus. But Van Horn also has familiar plants, so for now, I'm content to drive by a garden each morning and smile to myself, "boy, those hollyhocks look great after last night's rain." And I'll work on my windowsill herb garden.
It's raining again.
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