We Need Rain

This week our county was added to the list of upstate areas that are labeled "extreme drought." Mandatory water restrictions are expected to be in place by the end of the month - neighboring towns already have the restrictions in place. No washing vehicles (or anything else) on hard surfaces; no filling new or empty pools, no building washing, no watering for landscaping, etc.

Our location, just east of the southern end of the Appalachians, means that many of the storm systems that come south have been breaking up as they cross the mountains, so we just haven't gotten much out of them. We get the best rain when a system comes up from the Gulf, but there haven't been too many of those. A tropical storm coming this way instead of going westward would help, but. . .you can't just make that happen.

On a nicer note, my folks were here for a couple of hours yesterday, to deliver some carvings Mike is selling for them. We had lunch at a local place downtown that is a renovated hardware store - the old kind with the hardwood floors, beadboard ceilings, etc. There's even a shoeshine man in the entryway just like the '50s and earlier. We'd have taken and posted a picture of my dad getting his shoes shined in the oldfashioned chair, but Murphy's law decreed that the camera couldn't be found anywhere. It was nice to have them here even if it was brief.