Rain

As those of us who live in Singapore know, we've gone for a month without rain, and our normally luxuriant lawns are all toasty brown now. At the grocery store, the cashier asked me, "Would you like anything else?" I thought for a moment, then said, "Yes, I'd like some rain, please. I prefer that the grass be green." She didn't say anything, but she did smile.

Update: I'm happy to report that Singapore began getting the rain we needed several weeks ago. We started getting rain again about nine or ten days after I originally wrote the above post. While the lawns have all returned to their usual emerald green color, the trees are very much hit-and-miss. Perhaps a quarter of all trees here suffered badly from the stress of having no water. (Dead leaves would fall from the trees like it was autumn in New England, a very unusual sight here in tropical Singapore.) While most of the dead leaves that can fall off have done so, there are still many trees with either dead limbs or the tree itself has died from the month-long drought. Those will need to be cut down and replaced eventually. I expect it will take some time, perhaps up to a year or so, before the last traces of this dry season disappear from sight.