Seven months with no rain

   Today it rained! The first rain we’ve had since March or April.

   It has been a long hot seven months with no rain. Luckily we grow cactus, but even so we do a lot more watering than we’d like to. We add compost to the soil when we prepare it initially, and then we keep mulch on the soil, renewing it yearly to keep it fresh and deep on the soil. But even so, the plants do need water to keep up production. So most of our plants get watered weekly, and sometimes we water twice in a week when the weather is hot, and they need more than usual.

   The funny thing about this rain is that it is six weeks ago that I saw our first tarantula of the season walking around. The local lore says that when you see those big hairy spiders walking about, we are about six weeks form the first rains. This same legend continues that you can tell how much rain we’ll get by how high up the sides of the canyons their nests are. There is a good explanation for all this, and it ties into the regular workings of nature….it goes like this:

   The male tarantulas are the ones we see walking around in the daytime. They are looking for a mate and not concerned at this time with food. The females come out at night. The males on their walks will seek out and try to enter the subterranean nests the females live in. The reason they take off a couple months before the rain is so that when they find the female and mate, the young will be born during the beginning of the rainy season when the living is easier here in the California hills.

   The females build their nests near the water sources and small creeks that will attract lots of wildlife and small insects and bugs they like to eat. But they want to be high enough above the waterline during the big rains to keep their nests from being flooded and the spiders risking death.

   So in some way, these animals are able to know when the rains will begin, they also know how much rain will come so that they know how high above the creeks to build their nests.

   Nature is so intriguing, and I encourage all to examine nature minutely, this will give great insight into life.

Chapter 70 of theTao-Teh-Ching
My words are very easy to understand.
My teachings are very simple to put into everyday practice.
Yet no one who is tied to the world can understand them.
And if you are chained to the world, you cannot apply them in your life.
My doctrine comes from the source of Nature; my actions have a purpose in accord with the Law.
If you cannot understand this; you cannot understand me.
Because I cannot be understood I am a greater treasure than you know.
This is why the sage wears simple unpretentious clothes,
but his treasures are kept close to him, in his heart.