The Sense to Come In Out of the Rain

We have been getting a preponderance of rain here lately - to the point that I'm wondering what an ark would cost in today's dollar. However, there are some side effects of said rain that are just now beginning to become apparent. First is the fact that our lawn is looking particularly nice. It's green and squishy and, should the rain ever stop, it would be perfect for playing in and I'd enjoy plopping the little one in it to see what he thinks. Of course, the down side to this lovely lawn is two-fold: it has to be mowed with disturbing frequency (the which is challenging as it's rarely dry) and it just will provide a more striking contrast to the extreme deadness that will greet us come late July.

Like many in this area, Tim and I spend quite a bit of time in our basement. When we moved in, the basement was not finished. And after some hemming and hawing and estimate gathering, we spent a good two years of weekends (with several breaks thrown in) finishing it on our own. Since we didn't need the space, it made more sense to do it ourselves. And honestly? Tim and I enjoy doing home improvement type things and we work well together, so it wasn't the marriage breaker that these types of projects seem to be for other people. (In fact, I'd say we had quite a bit of fun with it - I imagine Tim would agree. Though we were both happy to have it finished because two years of weekends is a long time no matter how you count it.)

When my family moved to this area (when I was little), the house we bought also had an unfinished basement. My parents did similar hemming and hawing about finishing it, so we had a nice, creepy and dark basement for a little while. Basements were new things for my sister and me - I think our other house might have had a crawl space, but I'm not positive. Our friend down the block had a little bit of a cellar (much more a cellar than a basement - only an outside entrance and so forth) that we went in maybe twice, and that on a dare. Still, moving to this area basements were the norm and the storage space was welcome. Plus, it provided a space for my sister to do her science experiment on the effect of acid rain on earthworms.

Essentially, we had pots and pots of dirt full of earthworms in the basement and every so often, my sister would go down and "rain" various concentrations of acid water onto the "earth" and then check the death toll a few days after that. I'm pretty sure the experiment was only over a month or so. Regardless, it seemed that the worms in the super acidic soil just leapt from the pot, figuring that any environment was better than their current locale. And so we stepped on worm carcasses for many, many months. In fact, I only remember being free from those dessicated husks when the carpeting had been laid.

I've always figured that, despite the fact that the builders didn't put down any topsoil before laying our sod, we had a reasonable number of worms in our yard. I base this solely on our enormous robin population, but that seems to be a relatively reasonable assumption. Still, my sister's science experiment has been at the top of my mind since the recent deluges began, because my desk in the basement office sits near the sliding glass door. And so it is that I roll over at least two worms a day as they leave the yard for drier climes. Let's not even count the ones I squish with my slippers (because I'm not going barefoot down here until the rain stops.) Honestly though? I don't mind those too much, because, while gross, I can simply grab a tissue, wipe the guts off the floor (and my slipper) and send the corpse off to a watery burial in the sewer system. It's the ones that manage to wriggle their way under furniture and there proceed to shrivel to death, perfuming the air with the unmistakable perfume of worm decomposition that I truly mind - because the wood grain in our laminate is just about the same color, length, and general shape as worm corpses, and that makes them very hard to find.