I Love a Rainy Night

Ever since I was a little girl, I've loved thunderstorms. I love warm summer rains, I love dry heat lightning, I love the mist that hangs in the air in the spring and the fall, but most of all, I love a good rip-roaring, gully-washing, angels bowling thunderstorm. And yesterday, I got to experience the first big thunderstorm at the new house.

It was fabulous.

The rain and thunder began in the afternoon, coming in several waves of absolute gully-washers; as the old saying goes, it was coming down "like a cow pissing on a flat rock." If there were any leaks in our roof, gaps in our windows, or cracks in our foundation, we would have found them in this rain. (Good news: the only dampness was a small spot in the basement and some water driven in under the garage doors.)

One creature (other than me) who was completely undaunted by the storm was a gray tree frog, who - much like the Carolina wren who sat on the fence and sang for us the other morning - solved the mystery of the chirring sound we'd been hearing in the woods by perching himself on the edge of the pool and yelling his mating call, loud and clear.

He happily sang in the rain all night long, and this morning we found him paddling around in the pool, along with a wood frog, both of which my husband dutifully scooped up and chivvied off into the bushes.

I've already mentioned how much I love watching the birds through our big arched windows, but it didn't occur to me that those windows would also provide a lovely view of rain storms. With the woods right behind, there's no clear view of the sky through those windows, but the flashes of light against the dark trees was just lovely, and the streams of water running down the huge windows made exquisite patterns. From the front porch, where a wide expanse of sky is visible, you can see the direction the storm is moving, and the pond across the street provides interesting acoustics that amplify the rumbles of thunder. It's a completely different feel from experiencing a storm at our old house. In fact, it reminds me of my second-floor apartment a block away from the ocean back in Gloucester, where I could watch and hear storms moving across the sky over the sea, feeling like I was jutting up into the angry clouds. There's a sense of wildness and power here, as there was there, that was missing in our cozy suburban neighborhood.

I love feeling so close to nature here, because of both the constant parade of bird and animal visitors and the closeness of the sky and the weather. With so much less light pollution here, the sky is more full of stars than I've seen it outside of secluded campgrounds and my stint in the bush country of Zimbabwe. I feel more part of the world here. I love the world here.

I love a rainy night for reminding me just how much I love it here.

June Is Not Quite Bustin' Out All Over

Even if you’re not a Rodgers and Hammerstein fan, even if you’re not a musical theatre fan at all, you probably know (or at least, have heard) the song, “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over” from the musical Carousel.

The clip above shows what you expect to see in June in New England: bright sunshine, people in shirtsleeves, a light breeze, happiness all around. Even in real life, June is a time of year when you can actually imagine a bunch of people randomly breaking into song and dance for no particular reason. The lyric at about 2:10 sums up our expectations of the spring into summer transition here in New England: “March went out like a lion, a-whippin’ up the water in the bay. Then April cried and stepped aside, and along come pretty little May. May was full of promises, but she didn’t keep ‘em quick enough for some, and a crowd of doubtin’ Thomases was predictin’ that the summer’d never come. But it’s comin’, by gum! You can feel it come! You can feel it in your heart, you can see it in the ground, you can hear it in the trees, you can smell it in the breeze. Look around! Look around! Look around!” And then of course, it goes into the best-known line from the well-known chorus, and the very title of the song itself: “June is bustin’ out all over!”

But June hasn’t quite busted out anywhere around these parts yet. Today is a rather April-ish June, with cold temperatures, cloudy skies, and dreary rain. Instead of short sleeves and sandals, we’re all donning our rain slickers and galoshes. We’ve traded in our iced coffees for steaming mugs of joe. We’re pushing the “heated seats” button in our cars instead of the “A/C” button. The colorful flowers in the garden are sagging under the heavy rain and looking like they’d like to bust right back into the ground.

And yet, with the silence of the air conditioner that ISN’T running in my window, I can hear a whole flock of determined birds happily chirping outside. When I peek through the rain-streaked window, I can see my little neighborhood bunny happily nibbling on the damp grass, looking not the slightest bit deterred by the weather.

Maybe it’s because they don’t have calendars so they don’t quite realize that today is the first day of June. After all, last week was full of gorgeous warm days, days when I admired how quickly my impatiens had started to spread, noticing that our grass had thickened up and was ready to be mowed, happy at how much the ivy and the grapevine on the fence and spread and created a pretty green privacy hedge by the pool. If I wasn't expecting a beautiful day today merely by virtue of the fact that it's June first, I wouldn't be disappointed, either.

But maybe they just remember that the cool, damp, dreary weather makes us all, plants and animals and humans alike, appreciate the warm, dry, sunny weather ahead all the more. So I’ll try to hang in there for another few days, and I’ll keep hoping that before I know it, June really WILL be bustin’ out all over!!