Don’t fall for it

By Nancy Black

Ah! 

It was so nice outside on Monday morning that I wanted to go tiptoeing through the dead grass. When it is 91 degrees at noon and you feel a bit chilly, you know you live in Texas. But wait! Don’t let Mother Nature fool you. The extreme heat will be back, and with a vengeance! I dare any climate change/global warming denier to work for eight hours outside in the Texas heat laying hot tar on new roads in a state without mandated water breaks to convince me otherwise.

If you’ve lived in Texas long enough, you know that the arrival of fall means it is time for the State Fair of Texas. And with the Fair comes funky weather. Some years, it’s so darn hot outside, that most visitors spend their days packing into the Fair’s indoor exhibitions or standing under the outdoor misting fans. Other years, it has rained every day of the Fair, making for some pretty soggy corndogs and funnel cakes.

I turned to the trusted Farmer’s Almanac to see what the 2023 predictions were for the dates of the 2023 State Fair of Texas. “Crisp and cool,” was the headline from the almanac’s website search for the fall forecast.

“Cooler and drier weather should take hold during the fall, followed by a spell of cold and unsettled conditions in November and December. With the exception of the Southeast, where normal autumnal temperatures will prevail, the rest of the nation will experience a trend toward lower-than-normal temps. And most locations will experience above-normal precipitation, save for the Pacific Northwest where near-normal precipitation is expected.”

“Unsettled conditions”? “Lower-than-normal temps”? 

How exciting. I’m being sarcastic.

My neighbor and I joined forces recently to tackle our own corner of climate change, aka the shared yard between our houses. Our grass was dead, dead, dead. Like, crunchy dead. Like, flick a lit cigarette into the yard and it would ignite into flames dead. 

Before that happened, we decided to take action.

Due to the ever-increasing drought in our city, state, country and world, we decided to zeroscape the yard. River rocks, native plants and mulched areas around the trees now take the place of the dead grass. The results? We’ve already saved money on our water bills and one of our new Texas Sage bushes already has its first blooms of beautiful purple flowers.

We’re not trying to fool Mother Nature as much as work with her more closely moving forward. Because she’s going to do what she wants to do whenever she wants to do it, especially in Texas.