The genius of the weather needs an IQ boost.

Our friend Ben is not usually one to complain—shut up, Silence—but watching every plant in our beloved Hawk’s Haven landscape shrivel and die in the relentless drought and 100-degree heat is really a bit much. We’ve drained the last of our five rain barrels trying to keep the vegetables and container plants alive—an uphill battle—and are now praying that the well holds out.

Meanwhile, we ourselves are staggering back and forth to the house to fill bazillion gallon jugs with water, dump, refill, repeat. And as I’ve mentioned —no, Silence, I have not “only said this about a thousand times.” Go away, please. As I’ve mentioned, our veggie and fruit beds are at the very back of the property—the only sunny part of our yard—and the house is the better part of an acre away. Trust me, hauling about 40 gallons of water, jug by jug, in 100-degree heat is not fun. It must be the genius of the weather playing a bad joke on us.

And the worst of it is that those 40 gallons aren’t nearly enough. By the end of each day, Silence’s prized tomato and squash plants are already drooping. The poor potato plants are shrivelling just as they were starting to give us a multicolored flower show. I’m trying to keep the onions, basil (and other herbs), and all our peppers afloat. Forget greens in this weather! Our container-grown kale and Swiss chard are the sole survivors. It just kills us to see what would unquestionably have been our most productive garden ever fighting just to stay alive.

And that’s the part that’s getting water. Except for the container plants, the ornamentals are basically crisped. Lawns up and down the street have browned out. (Not ours—yet, anyway—because we set our mower high and only mow when the lawn starts to look raggedy. So our grass’s roots are shaded and the plants are still green, though the clover—in full bloom, of course—is clearly struggling.) Corn in neighboring fields has folded up its leaves. Our poor little stream, Hawk Run, has run dry, causing untold suffering to the minnows, crayfish, frogs, and water bugs that make their home there, not to mention the birds, dragonflies, and other wildlife that depend on it for water. Toads are coming up on our deck in search of water.

Whoever called that weather guy a genius, anyway?! Our friend Ben is so glad you asked. Most moderns have encountered the phrase “genius of the weather” in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Though most of us were probably focused on the adventures of Ebenezer Scrooge, Marley’s Ghost, and the hapless Bob Cratchit, such a peculiar phrase does tend to stick in the mind. “Genius of the weather” brings our hero and blog mentor, Benjamin Franklin, to our friend Ben’s mind, holding the kite and key aloft as the lightning crashes around him.

But it turns out that the expression predates Ben by several millennia and has nothing to do with genius at all, at least in its modern sense. Instead, the ancient Romans used “genius” to refer to a local spirit or sprite, sort of the presiding fairy of a family, clan, spring, tree, stream, you name it. These genii (the plural form) were propitiated by the Romans to bring good fortune or an abundant crop, much as we might put out milk and cookies for Santa or earlier cultures set out a bowl of cream for the fairies or leprechauns (who doubtless turned out to bear an uncanny resemblance to cats, but I digress).

Our friend Ben says to hell with that approach. I’m not about to propitiate some moron who’s hit us with the double whammy of heat and drought. This is war, fella. Straighten up and fly right, or next time you show up around here, I’m coming after you with a dead corn stalk. And don’t even think your so-called IQ can save you from the Wrath of Ben!