Waving not drowning

The current heat wave (see here)has everyone here in SA gathered around the TV weather every evening, only to feel a wave of deflation pass over them when the week long forecast is shown and gives a range of temperatures from 37-40.

This has now gone on for 8 days and we have a full week (at least) ahead of us. While I have blogged before about how this is not something out of the blue, but at least within the range of our South Australian experience (remember those long February-March school days back in the 60s, those hot old Uni orientation weeks in the un-airconditioned St Mark's College, and at least one very hot week at Goolwa when we used to go down to the beach at the dead of night because it was the only cool place) nevertheless it is a bit of a worry.

I feel as though the  struggle with the garden at Port Elliot is at least as significant as the advance of the Kalahari...will we simply have desert there in 5 years. I don't think so, maybe there was always going to be a stuggle to creat garden on a sand dune! I have realised in the last few weeks that the native bushland parts of that garden are actually looking quite good. And, oh, the smell of eucalyptus and native bushland when the temperature soars! What else might we expect?

It would be nice for this to end soon, we took a quarter off the front lawn by covering it with gravel on Saturday....should have done it a long time ago, Tilly takes it in her stride but it wears her down. And each day you meet at least two people who have not slept well.

It is a heat wave. But weare waving not drowning.

Unbelievable

I took a brief trip back from Goolwa Beach yesterday via the river front of the River Murray Estuary.
If you are down that way you should go, as it is appalling and I guess you don't take it in until you see it. Or at least I didn't.
The very lovely bird-hide in the reeds at the end of Bristow Smith Avenue, is now at least 100 metres away from any water (previously a couple of metres), and th famous Jet Skis are this year not running because the water is too shallow.
Now the river is a funny place. I can remember the carp plague of the mid 70s when you could go to the barrages and dip a paper bag in and catch (if you wanted to) any number of fish...just throw the bag away as it would have disintegrated!
God help us if we don't fix this up.
Would that the picture (left) of former days would soon return!

Strange idea

A well meaning man rang yesterday to tell me about someone who was sick, but that was not really why he rang (so he said)...he was inviting me to go and pray silently on the steps of the SA Parliament this evening.
As he painstakingly explained the rationale he told me this was about praying for rain. This is not an easy idea at the best of times, but his rationale was that today was the 38th anniversary of liberalising abortion laws in South Australia, and such and such a person had developed a belief that the current drought might be connected with that.
This is a difficult view of God, don't you think? A God who visits drought upon a nation because of political policy...to be sure it has a certain Old Testament quality but it seems difficult to sustain.
I think the real problem with this sort of thing is not that God is not capable of this or that, but that we want extraordinarily simple solutions to what are obviously complex situations.
Drought is much more complex (it seems to me) than God just being a bit ticked off at how wayward this or that government is, and we are being invited to much more profound repentance than just turning round the abortion laws...as unsatisfactory as they might be.
To be fair to this humble sort of chap he was struggling about how to give this some sort of rationale, and he did touch me when he said that the problem with abortion was that "This was all we had to offer people in deep distress." which seems to me a fairly important reflection on a lot of social policy....."This was all we had to offer...."

Not a drop

I was wondering in the shower (necessarily two minutes) this morning just what could go wrong next. This was not just the mere meanderings of my tiny little life, pathetic as it is; this was more mega-stuff.
One could be forgiven for thinking that things are really stuffed. Adelaide may have only 40 days of water left if it doesn't rain soon! The PM suggested yesterday (last ditch attempt of course) that we should all pray for rain...And I mean that! but what did he mean?
Did he mean that we are indeed at the point where there is no solution and so we might as well do something useless like pray? Did he mean ...ahh well it can't hurt? Did he mean tyo suggest that as a person of deep faith he believed that the Lord God (Adonai Elohenu oops...HaShem) could effect the replenishing of the Murray Darling basin....Or did he have a more profound view of prayer...like my friend A who says that rain-prayer helps us to express our needs and commit ourselves to God in everything. It would be good to think that a PM had such a sophisticated view.

Any way back to the shower. I came across the good news that you can now buy caffeinated soap {here}...why? I hear you ask!
So that while you are in the shower for your two minutes. You can also get your fix...which will kick in within five minutes.
Sounds plausible...and you would save the cup of boiling water.
BUT the joy of coffee is to do with drinking it isn't it. I have imagined already this morning sipping capuccino on the Piazza Navona (pictured) or the Boulevard St Germain...................

More proof

An hour later and it is still raining. Feels good

Pigeons on the grass

It is always heartening to hear the copious warbling of the magpies. This morning there was a bunch of them in the rose garden watching the traffic as people wended their
way to work. To hear one or two together is a delight. To see and hear five or six is ecstasy!
I often think that you see more of them close by (like all animals) when things are harsh as they have to take greater risks for food when it is scarce. [frightened they would fly away before I photographed them I also fed them a little morning tea!!] The very dry conditions that we have been experiencing are indeed very harsh, though this theory cannot explain these Maggies because we have had some rain over the last couple of days, but the aridity is so profound that everything seems to dry up very quickly.
As I looked up to go back inside two galahs, and then a third swooped
over the house. Alas I had no coffee cake to entice them to stay for photos.
What does it mean?
Of course it is Epiphany and those of us who know the Leunig cartoon know all about the Adoration of the Magpie.
I couldn't find that one so here 's another early Epiphany cartoon to lighten your day. (It's worth going to the Library to find the early Leunig cartoon books to have a good chuckle)

The grass withers

I am reminded by today's meditation (here) that things decay. I watch the garden drying out. And you realise that whereas once everything sort of had a residual moisture that meant things could last for a couple of days. Now we are all watering so modestly that as soon as a heat blast comes the water goes.
[I bought three or four hanging baskets of zinnias and petunias and they are in such wonderfully friable soil (much better than I would have used) that they flourish when all is well but they dry out like nothing].
Of course Isaiah is reminding us too that we are a drought zone.
I have just rung my bereaved friend as we wait for Chris's funeral tomorrow, at least we remind ourselves that such stuff is drought making! I have rung she who is taking the funeral (and who must be obeyed) and we talked along much the same lines.
I am just about to go to spiritual direction, and I will be saying how S & I have pushed the envelope in the last 24 hours to talk together for more than the 10 mins we can usually cope with, and in so doing perhaps arrived at an uncomfortable place...but a necessary one. We dry up and wither very easily.
Isaiah promises that the drought will not be the prevailing feature in our lives, I find this harsh and at times unbelievable. And have a degree of anger about a whole range of things which are drought creating.....but in some way a little part of me is in touch with the fact that there is a constancy in God that is there even in drought. Even though the drought is bloody awful.