A Near-forgotten Sound -- and Sight

A gauged argument is underway.  The rain measure on the deck reports 1/2" rainfall last night, while the garden measure insists there was 3/4".  Either way, I'm smiling.

We went to bed last night to the rhythmic pulsations of lightening behind the clouds in the northern sky.  The weatherman during the 10 pm news lamented that the rain would miss us this far south -- this being the last opportunity for showers all week.  The illuminations outside notwithstanding, I resigned myself to a longer dry spell.   In the netherworld of slumber I dreamed I heard some thunder -- and rain splatters on the window -- but I knew it had to be only the precipitation of a longing imagination.  The rain, I knew, was missing us.  The weatherman had said so, and I always accept what the weatherman says as gospel truth (insert "smile" here).

When the dogs dragged me outside for their pre-dawn constitutionals I thought I sensed moisture, but it was yet too dark to see.   The coffee, then, and the paper, and finally the morning light and the rain gauge markings revealed.  Throwing on some clothes, I smiled and thought to use the softened soil as an opportunity for poison ivy control.  The tentacled roots are freer on such occasions and we had noticed a frightening proliferation yesterday near the vegetables.  And I did fill a bucket with miscellaneous weeds encroaching on the dahlias and the offending ivies before the air was alive with a hardly remembered sound, and then the sight...

...of falling rain.  More.  In an instant it was upon the garden and me and for a moment I couldn't decide if I should hurry inside for the dryness or remain where I was and relish the wetness.  I had brought the power wagon down with me with milk jugs filled from the rain barrels by the barn, and I had intended to return it with the gathered branches from our trimming last evening.  Parked there, dripping by the open garden gate I mused that its engine probably didn't need the drenching, so my decision was made.  I turned the ignition, shifted into high, and together we raced for the shelter of the barn.  But I enjoyed the sloshing sprint.

It has been a curious summer.  By this time last year the rain barrels had been dry so long that spiders had spun webs in the faucets.  On the heals of that crippling drought, this summer was ushered in by excessive rains in April and May that flooded crop land all over the state.  And then the floods receded once again into drought -- here, but countered by renewed flooding in other parts of the country.  That, and according to news reports, this year has already seen twice as many "named" tropical storms in the oceans as is the average.  And still there are those who dismiss any concern over climate change.  It could well be that these severe and spasmodic weather systems end up dismissing them, driving the facts of the matter home.

In the meantime, the gauged argument has found some measure of detente.  Both maintain their earlier divergent reports, but both agree that in this light of morning another 1/4" has fallen.  And everything -- bean and gourd and bulb and even ivy -- seems to be smiling and happy.

Most of all, perhaps, me.