You Never Miss the Water Till the Well Runs Dry

The little patch of woods behind the barn is not our land.  The owners are absentee owners.  We never see them.  They don't mow the grass and the grass and privet gets tall.  It becomes a breeding ground for mosquitoes, possums, snakes, rats, and other critters.  Oftentimes, I'll open the gate and just go walking back there in the woods.

There are a few nice live oak trees in the woods, but it is primarily old willow trees, Chinese tallow trees, Chinaberry trees, and privet.  Not too many years ago (30 or 40, perhaps?), things probably looked a lot different back there.

As I walk through, I come across a large block of bricks with 1 inch diameter rebar sticking out of it.  I'm not sure what this structure was.  It looks like something uncovered in the Amazon rainforest.  Moss and fern is reclaiming it, and the bricks are crumbling.

Then I come across this.  Once being a rice farmer, I know exactly what this is.  This is an old rice irrigation well.  There was once an engine that turned eight belts that wrapped around the pulley atop the gearhead and turned a shaft that pulled water up from beneath the ground.  The water flowed up from the pipe and into a pipe (now missing) that moved the groundwater into the concrete flume you see in the foreground. 

Crystal clear, cool water flowed through the man-made canal and into surrounding rice fields, flooding them to grow acres and acres of rice.  Those fields which once produced rice are no longer flooded by irrigation wells, but now are covered in houses populated by families.  Trees have now grown up in some of those fields and crumbling remains of irrigation wells that are now just rusting hulks of iron litter the landscape.

It is amazing to me how fast the landscape changes in just a few years.  Entire cycles have come and gone as evidenced by the willow tree in the center of the photograph below which has grown to maturity, died, and now has oyster mushrooms feeding on it.  In a short time this tree will fall and succumb to beetles, worms, and other forces of nature that will turn this tree into forest soil.

Not to get all philosophical, but life is short.

 James 4:14 King James Version (KJV)14 Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. 

Like the Second Law of Thermodynamics says, things are moving from order to disorder, deteriorating.  I walked back from the woods thinking about this.  Kind of depressing as you think about it. 

I did, however, spot something to lift my spirits.  Check out all the white blooms decorating the vines running along the ground on the south side of the hen house.

Those are the blooms of dewberries.  They'll be ripening and we'll be back here scouring the ground for those big sweet berries that will appear.

I've marked the spot where the dewberries are and will check back each weekend until it's time to harvest.