A PURELY PERFECT RAIN!

Today the glowering skies finally kept their promise and delivered rain. Not a lot, it’s true; but what the storm lacked in duration it made up for in exuberance. No more than a minute after I’d dumped and raked the final wheelbarrow of soil in the large flower bed I’ve been plugging away at since before my Florida junket, the first drops began pattering through the leaves. I took refuge on the side deck. Thirty seconds later the dark clouds opened and the rain poured down—a deluge you could hear coming like an onrushing wind. In seconds the deck was drenched. I bolted for the door. Looking back, it was barely possible to see across the river to the island. No way to tell whether or not my turkey vulture neighbors made it to the shelter of the tall sycamores. The downpour roared. Rain fell in torrents—hard, fast, bouncing off the deck’s planking, flattening the ox-eye daisies beside the stone steps which lead down to the water. The pool in front of the cottage bubbled as if on hard boil. In the midst of the cloudburst a kayaker came paddling through the riffle, over the lip of the drop-off, and into the Cottage Pool—drenched to the core; as wet sitting upright as he would have been turned upside down. The poor guy looked miserable…but I remember plenty of similar soakings I’ve taken running rivers in canoes, and the truth is, if the weather was warm I sort of enjoyed the experience. I hoped this fellow had a similar attitude. Fifteen minutes after it began, the rain ended. One moment it was raining…the next, the sky-faucet had been twisted to off. A minute or two later the sun peeked through the clouds as the trees drip, drip, dripped in staccato rhythm. As best I can tell, my little acre of riverbank received perhaps a half-inch of rain. Enough to give things a good watering without raising the river’s level. Plus I got my work done in time for the show. A purely perfect rain!