Hot Flashes

Dear Mother Nature


Put down the blow torch. It seems you’re a bit confused.

Perhaps you found yourself in need of weed and have been enjoying the fruits of your labor in Colorado a tad too much. Perhaps a ginkgo boost with the heft of a Triton II missile added to your morning juice will boot up that bamboozled noggin of yours.

Whatever the reason, Mommie Dearest, you seem to have mixed up your seasons. The last time we had a wintry rainy season was when Andy Fox had hair.

Just so’s ya know, I heard a report that it’s so bad, the California Catholics are praying for rain. You know how badly they need it for wine and baptisms and stuff.

So, just look at how you’re complicating sacred lives. Have you no mercy? I think the Indians have begun their rain dance and are you listening or are you too busy playing bingo?

And let me tell you one more thing. While we were once a town of 1,000 oaks, we’re down to about 263. Pretty patheticlooking survivors at that, with gnarly branches bearing signs that read, “No joke . . . soak your oak.” It’s embarrassing.

So embarrassing that the Conejo hills are alive with the sound of crackling mesquite and roadrunners that just sit around reading the Acorn. Nobody’s singing around here, Missy.

To our shock and awe, the Sparkletts man has been held hostage in the Wildwood gulch by a gang of “weckless wabbits.” Followed by a pack of rattlesnakes and crafty coyotes threatening to drain The Lakes.

But it’s no joke that we’re frying here in January, old girl, and we’re not talking pork rinds. Although, thanks to you, my skin is beginning to look like one.

Just so’s ya know, we were once known for our lush vegetation. Once. Now, the only garden surviving in the Gardens of the World is the one from Somalia.

Let me jog your memory. Remember the song about the lady who “hates California because it’s cold and it’s damp?” Do you? Remember when you’d shower us with an average of 15 inches per year? And that guy you’d date every now and then . . . El Niño? What happened to him?

We liked him. We could turn our water off for a few months and save a few shekels.

Our lawns were green, our pansies would blossom, our broccoli would grow, and our nasal passages flowed like the Venetian canals. So please bring back Mr. El Niño.

Yes, I know, “it never rains in California,” but Mother Nature, if you’ve heard the rest of the song, “it pours.” We’re waiting.

Elizabeth Kirby has been around a long time—a resident of Thousand Oaks since 1983, whose glass is usually half full if she can find it. Her column appears twice a month in the Acorn. Reach her at kirby@theacorn.com or kirby.hanson@verizon.net. To read all her columns, check out her Facebook page www.facebook.com/#!/elizabethkirbyandhotfl ashes.



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