celebratingour 2 0 thyear - The Parklander Magazine

HUMORBy Victoria LandisIremember a cartoon when I was a child about April showers bringingMay flowers. It might have been Little Lulu. She sang a happy songregarding the rain, then the sun appeared, and beautiful masses offlowers sprung up in full bloom. The birds and their nestlings chirpedalong. Maybe a singing cow or horse was in it, too.After decades of adult years (weather seemed inconsequential until I had togo to work in it), I’ve yet to see anyone singing with delight about a deluge inany season. Once in a great while, a soft, gentle rain falls—pattering ahypnotic tune on the roof. But I live in South Florida, a place not known forsubtlety, even when it comes to weather.The majority of our rainfall feels likea giant is standing over your house pouring bucket after bucket on top of you.And he’s laughing with stereotypical fiendish glee—bwa-ha-ha.Rather than produce vibrant displays of colored blooms, when our rain stopsit leaves delicate ornamental plants smashed to smithereens. The weeds,however, explode in an exuberant spectacle. Mosquito larvae spring to life,then soar in a celebratory ritual of sucking blood from anything with sweatglands. I used to keep close to my ex-husband when we stepped outsideduring these times. The mosquitoes loved him, and if he was near, they’dleave me alone. He was also the best at finding stray sewing pins on the floor.No matter what, he’d be the only to step on one and have it pierce his foot. It’sstrange—the things you discover you miss about someone. But I digress.The bumper crop that pops up in my yard after a hard rain is mushrooms.Within hours, the fungi grow at breakneck speeds. I’ve seen broad orangeones spotted with brown. Skinny-stemmed white ones. Pink, yes—pink,ones. Brown ones. Some of them smell so bad the neighbors’ dogswon’t go near.The animals seem to know what will hurt them. I can’t say the same forhumans. More than once, I’ve heard giggling and rustling noises near the’shrooms—young adults searching for “magic” mushrooms after the rain.Tempting as it is to have some fun as the “get off my lawn” shrew, I resist.Instead, I turn on the lights, open the front door, and call for an imaginarycat. It’s usually enough to scare the scavengers into the next yard. The nextday I knock down and smash all the mushrooms I can find. I’m prettycertain that real hallucinogenic fungi need manure to grow. My yard ismostly sand, but why take a chance some whiz-bang lawyer could make acase against me because I didn’t protect his clients, now drooling onthemselves in front of a jury, from my pop-up mushrooms.Back to our crazy heavy rains.This past summer, to prepare for a new typeof sod, I tore out the few remaining clusters of St. Augustine grass and thethick, deep, entrenched weeds in my front lawn leaving a bare expanse ofexposed sand. There was a smattering of black dirt specks visible in themix. Not enough to say I actually had topsoil. One day, it rained fiveinches in under four hours. It was a tumult. When the sky cleared, everyprecious black soil particle had floated to the top of the sand, saileddownhill on the newly formed river of run off, and deposited itself on thefront sidewalk. There were two inches of thick, sticky, dark silt coveringthe concrete for at least 30 feet.I panicked. The only dirt I had to nourish the new sod now looked like adislocated mud bog, the kind where they find mummified remains inEurope. Of course, I’d just paid to have the sidewalk pressure cleaned aweek earlier. That giant with the buckets had to be doubled over withlaughter at what he’d done to me.There was no way I’d pay to haul in moretopsoil for the new grass. The sod stretched my budget as it was. Plus, myfor-the-most-part patient neighbors would complain for sure.So, I had to move the mud. Using a square-front shovel,I scraped up the muck inch-by-inch and flung it asfar as I could back onto the sand. Took me afew hours. Then, no more than an hourafter I’d finished, it rained again. Scrape,rinse, repeat.All in all, I love living in South Florida.I’ve lived in New Jersey, Georgia, Texas,California, the Florida Panhandle andHawaii. This may be the mostentertaining place there is.Between the crazy weatherand the silly humanshenanigans in the dailynews, I may have foundnirvana for humor writers.50 MAY 2010