Please let it rain today

This blog seems to be settling into a Weather->Plants->Racists!->Weather->Plants->Racists! cycle. Hopefully I will have some more adoption-related news soon.

For now, I am just watching the skies for rain. Our plants are begging for it. Our windfall water source -- the flooded basement next door -- was pumped out. It turns out the landlord really wasn't being negligent. What happened was some crackheads stole the copper piping from the basement without shutting off the water first. It has to be crackheads, since they tend to be the ones desperate and deranged enough to engage in such a high-effort, low-reward criminal activity. Despite all these problems the house has finally been rented, so I guess we'll meet our new neighbors as soon as the plumbing is fixed and they move in. I'll recommend they install an alarm system with an extra sensor on the crawlspace entry, like we already have.

I have tried to plant natives as much as possible, especially in the backyard. But even some of those are finicky. The leucothoe and mountain laurel are gasping. Our fall planting season is going to be ruined unless it rains, since I'm not going to bother planting a bunch of stuff that's just going to die off in the dry winter. We may have to write off our one camellia. Next year I'll concentrate on more drought-resistant stuff.