Yesterday was a beautiful day, bright skies, cool temperatures in the 50's F and a slight breeze. Time to get out and clean the garage or something. And so we did, KK mostly, I, an onlooker, encouraging and responsive to direct requests for specific tasks.
Today is a different story. I awakened to hear the rain upon the sky-light. I lay there for a while and then got up to make coffee and get the newspapers. Sitting in the "sun room" the constancy of rain upon the two sky-lights provides the musical backdrop to my morning readings, emailings and observations. The geese are standing on the lawn across the way, heads tucked under their wings, apparently fast asleep. The red cardinals that are nesting in the spruce tree next to the sun room, continue to fly in and out of the tree, engrossed in their construction project. The rain has revived the grass from its yellow winter slumber, to a truely emerald green banket. The shrubs and trees are various shades of yellow/greeen as early leaves emerge from their buds. The rain has also raised our Emerald Lake water level. Recent rains, adding to a wet fall and winter, means that our water table is high, higher than in my memory. I am mindful of high water in my capacity as a Commissioner for the Meridian Township Planning Commission, we hear and plan for buildings to be built higher than the 100 year flood plain (843 feet above sea level). Once the ground water table is high, the ability for the ground to accept further moisture, becomes less, and, the 100 year flood may not come in a Biblical sense, 40 days and 40 nights of rain, rather, a tipping point is reached where runoff and absorption are no longer enough to keep the lakes and streams within their borders. I am reminded of the similarity in this last point, with the current debate regarding global warming. Since Mars is measurably heating up and its South Pole glacers are melting with the increase intensity of our sun, my view is that the Earth is also heating up for the same reason, our sun, and that human activity may or may not be playing the role in global warming to the extent touted in the media, yet, the increase in the size of cities acting as heat sinks, along with some measure of increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, may serve as a tipping point which melts our Earth's glacers and floods our coastal lands. If our sun is the major driver of the warming and cooling of our Earth, then Earth will cool down again, glacers will form, and that beach front property you bought, will once again claim a high market value, assuming of course that one lives a million years or so.
