Drought

My part of northern Indiana is officially in drought. We had lots of nice rain earlier this spring, but hardly anything in May. Unirrigated farm crops are becoming stressed. My patio plant is thriving, however. In Texas we called this plant portulaca and it was usually in hanging baskets. Here it is called moss rose.
When we moved in last summer, this plant was about the size of a dinner plate and had a few orange blossoms. It died back in the winter, but came back this spring with lots of “baby” plants around its perimeter. Now it is spreading and the seedling plants are merging with the parent to form a ground cover. There are lots of blossoms in orange, yellow, white, pink. I am enjoying them because if we have a hard winter in 2013 I don’t know if it will reappear or not. I don’t have any experience with moss rose.

We experienced a drought of mail, too. Since we subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, we should at least have found that in our box. Yesterday my husband called the post office. The substitute postal worker who delivers our mail thought it was to be forwarded. It has been sent who-knows-where and may or may not come back to us. The good news is that we did receive mail on Wednesday and an apology.
We also had failure of our Dish Network DVR and the loss of all of our recorded programs and movies. Bye-bye Downton Abbey, farewell special on Jackie Kennedy Onassis and wedding of Kate and Will, so-long the movies we recorded during our 3-month special of free Starz.
These are the prickly things in the bowl. Perhaps a lesson in what is really important, but kind of hard to give thanks. I know: my TV still works, the retirement village waters my lawn from a well so it is green, and my mail service has resumed. Life is still good; just a little hard to swallow.