This NPR story has been on my mind this week:

Known For Its Floods, Louisiana Is Running Dangerously Short Of Groundwater

Louisiana has a lot of problems – rampant industrial pollution, abysmal rates of poverty and chronic health problems, bottom-of-the barrel education, to name a few – but I, like many others, didn’t think that a scarcity of drinkable water was one of them.

Yet it’s true: between industry, farming, and lawn-watering, we are pulling water out of our aquifers faster than they can be refilled. Which is disconcerting, to say the least.

For what it’s worth, our family has been on the edge of the Conserve Our Water bandwagon for a while, with things like rain barrels and infrequent toilet flushing. I did the math, and the average American uses 3.5 times as much water as we do. So I feel like we’re on the right track…but our aquifer (the Chicot) is being overdrawn by 350 million gallons a day. Which means our few thousand gallons a month help, but not very much.

As is so often the case in our great state, one of the big hurdles to doing anything about the groundwater problem is the lack of regulation. As in, there is no regulation of how much water an individual or company can pump, and no cost for pumping it. And as Tegan Wendland points out in her story, so many of our politicians are cozied up to the industries which benefit from all this free water that there’s little hope of reform any time soon.

The rest of WWNO’s reporting on this topic:

https://www.wwno.org/post/amid-rising-seas-and-record-storms-louisianas-water-running-low

https://www.wwno.org/post/louisianas-biggest-source-groundwater-losing-water-fast

https://www.wwno.org/post/industry-overuse-puts-capital-city-drinking-water-risk

https://www.wwno.org/post/groundwater-threats-compounded-changing-climate

https://www.wwno.org/post/lawmakers-sidestep-groundwater-crisis-decades

I set myself a writing goal for Lent: one poem a day, related in some way to the daily readings. I knew it would be a challenge, but I sit down to write almost every day anyway, so it should have been just the first part of my usual writing time, repurposed.

I did not expect it to be so hard.

I think I’ve missed one day so far, so that feels like a victory. (Jacob has decided he does still need naps after all, so that has made it much easier.) Quality is another matter entirely. Sometimes I look at the readings and think, “What could I possibly have to say about that?” Sometimes I don’t even get that far – I feel too tired to even read, much less make something of my own. In those times I do it just because I said I would, and sometimes I’m rewarded by a poem that isn’t totally terrible.

Needless to say, I haven’t written anything I’m willing to share. Yet.

Also, I will not be continuing this practice after Easter. I had a teacher in middle school who had stopped giving things up for Lent, because everything she gave up for Lent she ended up giving up for good. I’ve never had that problem, and don’t expect to start now.

On the other hand, this feels like a “storing up treasure” experience – besides the close attention it’s forced me to pay to Scripture, I’ll have forty-ish first-draft poems by Easter. That’s months and months of revisioning waiting to happen…and while some of them will certainly be left on the shelf, there are already a couple I’m excited to spend some more time with, to dig deeper into, and form something thoughtful and perhaps even beautiful.

Also, I am looking forward to Holy Week. I may skip the readings for Holy Saturday and write about the Exsultet. It includes bees. Twice. That’s liturgy I can get behind.

So…we painted a piano green.

In our defense, the sound board is warped, and it won’t hold a tune anymore. But we didn’t want to put it on the curb…so we’re turning it into a planter. (Can’t you just imagine some purple basil in there?)

I thought I was painting it a nice deep sage green, but something comes over me when I look at paint chips. This color is listed as “Mossy Bench,” but the members of our family agree it’s closer to “Day-Old Mate Latte.”

So we are dedicating this piano-planter to Pope Francis, as he is well known to love mate, the traditional Argentinian beverage. (Though I expect he likes his fresh, not day-old.)

Now it just needs a catchy name…something like Habemus Piano or Papa Piano or The Mate of Music. I’m open, as usual, to suggestions.

No deep thoughts this week, so here’s the garden update:

The scraggly bush-tree that was a stump when we moved in 2 1/2 years ago has shown its true colors.

It is most definitely a Japanese magnolia, which I have wanted in my yard since I first met one almost 20 years ago at Tulane. Score one for the house, and one for being too lazy to dig out the stump before we knew what it was.

It’s time to bring in the cabbages, but I’ve lost the cabbage soup recipe I used last winter that the kids loved. If you have suggestions, please send them my way.

I harvested about a gallon of curly kale yesterday, all from a roughly six-inch by two-foot space. Bunches of cilantro are next.

I wouldn’t have harvested it all now, except that it’s time to start planting, and I need to sheet mulch this bed before we put tomatoes in it. Craig is determined to have a repeat of last summer’s Wall of Tomatoes.

I invested in a grow-light this year, and the first seedlings are ready to harden off, so that we can plant them in…

THE SPACESHIP BED! We have grand plans to turn the whole back yard into garden beds, and this one is the first. Three walls complete (thanks to a diligent and creative husband) and it will be a while before the fourth, so it’s been double dug and will soon be planted with the zucchini, anise hyssop, and oregano from under the grow-light, as well as lots of other goodies. It just happens that, with the keyhole walkway, it looks a little like a spaceship. Hopefully it will be less noticeable once the plants are in.

I also pruned the climbing rose WAAAAAY back, which is a little terrifying. But the guy on YouTube said it would make it happy…I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

Turns out I have one Deep Thought after all – it’s been a good two days (or week…who’s counting?) digging and lugging and planting a little. Even when it seems like I’m just piddling, not really accomplishing much, it’s still been refreshing, and at least felt like I was doing something worthwhile. Which maybe says something about the importance of the worker part of Peter Maruin’s worker-scholar ideal.

And, God willing, there will be vegetables from some of this work on our table three months from now.