Playing the Rain Game

July 28, 2022 — Pat Bertram

I’ve been playing a new game lately called, “Will it rain?” It’s a simple game, with no rules, no challenges, no rewards. All I do is track the possibility of storms with a weather app. You’d think it would be simple, a quick check to see what the day’s weather would be, and then the weather happens.

But not here, not now. Last night when I went to bed, there was a 75% chance of it raining in the early morning hours. It didn’t rain, so I checked the app when I got up, and it said there was a 95% chance of rain before noon. Again, it didn’t rain. So I checked the app again, and it said there was a 50% percent chance of rain by 3:00 o’clock. Not only did it not rain, but the sun came out and the temperature shot up about ten degrees more than was forecast. Now the app says 15% chance of rain after 7:00.

So, will it rain? Apparently, no one knows.

It wouldn’t matter what the forecast is, but with so many rain days that turned out to be non-rain days, I should probably water my lawn, but I certainly don’t want to oversaturate it. When we were getting rain, I got mushrooms in my lawn, and the brown spots where the grass died didn’t get any less brown.

I’ve decided worrying about the lawn is a foolish occupation of my worry time. Not that I schedule a time to worry, you understand, it’s just that there always seems to be something niggling at me. In the fall, I will have to reseed a few areas where the grass has receded (it hasn’t just receded, it’s flat-out disappeared, but I liked the reseed/recede homophone). I will also have to dig up the Bermuda grass that is launching a full-scale attack on the finer grass, so it doesn’t really matter if I have five spots to reseed or ten spots. So, since it’s already in the schedule, it’s not worth worrying about.

I had been wondering about when to mow with all the rainy days we were supposed to have, but today, when the sun came out, I went out and did the chore. I also took photos of flowers, which I’m sure comes as no surprise to you. The dark purple petunia with the pink highlight is one of the petunias that grew itself from last year’s petunias, though those petunias had no pink highlights.

Tomorrow looks as if it will be a repeat of today, starting out with a 68% chance of rain, so lucky me — I get to play the game again.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.