…Or in other words, for what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful. No matter where Hurricane Dean makes landfall, South Texas will most likely get more rain. And we need more rain, (on top of the forty days and forty nights quantities which we have already been blessed with this year), about as much as Custer needed another Indian.

The first two weeks in August were about the longest stretch we had gone without a gully-washer, all spring and fall. Quite honestly it’s not like we were really complaining about that; a couple of times a decade it is damned nice not to have a summer drought. The wildflower meadows were spectacular this year and they lasted until… well, the tougher wildflowers, like yellow daisies, Mexican Hat, and sunflowers are still gong strong even as I write. I saw fields of purple wild verbena that I had almost never observed before. And when Wil and Blondie and I went down to the coast in June, Wil kept remarking that everything appeared as lush and green as the English countryside. Usually by high summer, the wildflowers are gone and the hills and meadows are starting to look light brown and medium-crispy. By August, everything is the color of dust. If it weren’t for watering gardens and lawns, suburbia would look pretty much the same, but not this year. The kvetching about not being able to go out and mow the yard because the lawn squelches underfoot like a soggy sponge has risen to nearly unbearable levels.

The grass itself is nearly up to an elephant’s eye; mine would be, if I hadn’t pulled out the last of it and did xerioscaping and a lot of pavers set in gravel by way of dog-proofing the back yard last year. But the bay tree and the fig tree, and the crepe myrtles have practically exploded, having put on so much new growth. Aside from the lawn-care fanatics, who really don’t want their private patch of paradise to look like an 8th of an acre of tall-grass prairie, the gardeners and wild-flower enthusiasts have few complaints about the rain. The ground is now so saturated, and the aquifer topped up to the over-fill level, any more rain will just spill off.

Our main local headache after the next bad storm does a prolongued swirlie over south Texas is that suburban San Antonio is threaded by creeks, and fairly substantial ones at that. Leon, Salado, Cibolo Creeks, and a handful of smaller tributaries all feed eventually into the San Antonio River. Even when there isn’t an established stream-bed, usually a wide swath of mown grass with some interesting rocks and a trickle of water down the middle, there is a well-known tendency for water to collect in the roads at certain points after there has been any more rain than a gentle sprinkle.

Some of these places are marked as low-water crossings, with a kind of giant yellow yardstick set vertically into the ground. Others can be recognized as such by mud-stains and an assortment of ground-level debris trapped at a higher level in fences and shrubs. The police put up barriers at most of them, but others are just well known by regular commuters. After living in the city and experiencing the aftermath of a couple of rainstorms, you just know where water gathers and swamps the street and adjust accordingly. With an extended rainstorm, though, the deeper such pools will become. Water in the creek-beds will rise over the level of the bridges crossing them… and water will collect in new places and catch everyone by surprise. It’s kind of embarrassing, to know you can be swept away in your car, in the middle of a major metropolitan area. Yeah, it’s nice to stay in touch with nature, but when the rescue services have to bring a rope out to you, marooned on the roof of your car in the middle of a raging torrent at the Basse Road and Highway 281 off ramp; it’s all a bit too much of a good thing. So, we’re watching the weather services with a bit of nervousness, and wondering if we should just take a vacation day or two next week, rather than risk the commute.

On the bright side, at least someone hasn’t drowned in high water in a parking garage elevator, in the same manner as a luckless office worker did in Houston several years ago.