Drought, Walnuts, and That Team Formerly Known as the Redskins
Forget the rain, a good snow is what's needed to parch the soil says Donnie Johnston. Until that arrives, there's walnuts to crack, deer to harvest, and a lot of bad football to watch.
By Donnie Johnston
COLUMNIST
We need rain. Good, soaking rain. Substantial rain. It is dry.
If this were the middle of the growing season, we would be in real trouble. As it is, the soil is so parched that I cannot get a plow in the ground. For about a foot down, it is as dry as a bone.
Since July 20, I have recorded just over five inches of rain total. In October I measured 1.8 inches, the most of any of the past four months. Over that period we traditionally get maybe 12 inches.
Even the rains that we have gotten are of the two- or three-tenth variety, not enough moisture to get past the grass roots. Two-tenths of an inch of rain does little more than get the pavement wet.
The water table is beginning to suffer and some small towns, like Front Royal, have put voluntary water restrictions in place.
We need rain. Better yet, we need snow. All the winter forecasts — including my own — are calling for good snowfall in the next few months, but the weather patterns must change for that to happen. Right now, all the storms are either going south of us or through the Ohio Valley.
Snow melts slowly and allows moisture to seep into the ground. It may be aggravating to drive in, but snow does a world of good for the deep water table.
As of now, however, there is no substantial rain or snow in sight.
Let’s move on.
The game in Spain just plain drove Washington fans insane. Two terrible teams, each trying hard to find a way to lose a football contest. Washington proved the most efficient loser (Miami won).
The team formerly known as the Redskins has now lost six straight and, as someone put it, the old Redskins are back. This was to be Washington’s year. Now it is another, “just wait until next year.”
I was thinking the other day about the early 1960s when the Redskins didn’t sell out home games, and the NFL enforced a local TV blackout. Folks from my area would go to Fredericksburg and rent a motel room for Sunday afternoon to see the game, which was not blacked out on the Richmond TV station (that Fredericksburg motels could get).
Times have certainly changed.
People were complaining Sunday about the 9:30 am game start (2:30 Madrid time). Ever stop to think that all the 1 p.m. East Coast games start at 10 a.m. in California? Everything is programmed for the East Coast, where the vast majority of the population resides.
A friend was in a North Carolina outlet mall last week and went to pay for her purchases at a self-pay checkout.
When the total came up, the machine asked if she would like to leave a tip. Really? Tip a machine? Talk about arrogance.
Have you ever heard the term “working alive?” My daughter uttered that the other day, and her husband and daughter laughed at her. They said they had never heard it.
I use it all the time. It means “busy to an extreme.” In other words, when Walmart is packed, one might say that the store is “working alive.”
It is a mountain saying (probably referring to a barrel of snakes), but I have used it all my life.
I’m still cracking walnuts. I try to find an hour or so every day to beat my thumb up with a hammer and I’m doing a pretty good job — on both the thumb and the walnuts.
As of now I have six-plus quart bags filled and in the freezer with probably another 10 quarts to go. That will make a lot of brownies and apple-nut cakes.
Got a preacher friend that comes up from North Carolina and hunts, and every year he misses his wife’s birthday because of his yearning to be out in the woods.
“Well, it’s her fault,” he says. “She should have not been born the first week of deer season.”
Not sure how that goes over at home, but that’s the way hunters think.
But then, he fills the freezer with venison and buys no beef each year, so I guess his wife forgives him.
Five deer in the first three days of this season.
My garden thanks him.
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