Brain Sizzle...

Hot in Alabama

“I come from down south, where vegetation does not know its place. Honeysuckle can work through cracks in your walls and strangle you while you're sleeping. Kudzu can completely shroud a house and car parked in the yard in one growing season. Wisteria can lift a building off its foundation, and certain terrifying mints spread so rapidly that just thinking about them on a summer night can make you hair stand on end.”
Bailey White (Mama Makes Up Her Mind)

Spring rains brought out a bumper crop of vegetation here in the deep south, and then, in early summer, the rain stopped...completely. So now, in autumn, we have a vast forest of droopy green and yellow trees and vines that seem confused as to their purpose. The Virginia Creeper that usually grows abundantly up the outer walls of my house, sticking little green tendrils under second-story window screens and making spooky shadows on the bathroom curtains, has only climbed about two feet off the ground. There is typically a jungle of trumpet vine and morning glory along the back fence, but not this year. This is the year that nothing green has grown—every type of vegetation has a stunted quality about it, as though it developed plant dementia, and just forgot how to keep going. I can't blame it, to tell you the truth. The temperature here, at the waning of September, is still in the 90's every single day, and there is no rain in sight.

I noticed at the market the other day, an enormous display—not of mums, or pansies, typical for this time of year—but of succulents. Small desert dwellers, come to challenge the kudzu monsters. They remind me a little of the Ewoks of Endor. Did you realize that those cute little teddy bears were cannibals? Me neither until my son pointed it out. Now I'm worried about the little succulent sitting on my kitchen windowsill. Who knows what he'll turn into in this heat.

This has been a lost summer to me. When the temperature doesn't drop below ninety for months, you get sluggish-brain syndrome. No one wants to go outside after nine o'clock in the morning. My neighborhood feels like a ghost town, an illusion of a neighborhood projected onto a green screen. It'll mess with your mind, believe me. I keep praying for cooler weather, and rain, please God, some rain. But, no. I've even solicited Liza to pray to the dog-God for such. She looks very serious about it, but so far the dog-God hasn't come through either. Perhaps you could say a word or two to the Powers-that-Be on our behalf. If you don't “believe” in global warming, come spend a week in hellish Alabama. It'll make a believer out of anyone.

                                                            In the Spirit,

                                                                Jane