Rain and Porch

It is raining.

I am writing to you from my porch this morning where, enshrouded in darkness, it is raining.  Not the heavy downpours that we seem prone to during this time of year but rather the gentle sort of rain that I would recognize from Old Home during the Fall or Spring.

It is another one of those circumstances that becomes a bit of a shocker:  yesterday we were at the very high 90's and brutally hot.  Even last night when I walked Syrah the Mighty at 9:30 there was still not a cloud in the sky. Now,  blessed rain.

There is a cool breeze that is wafting its way across the porch as I write as well.  It is devoid of any hint of humidity which the day might later bring but is now just lazily and happily moving across the porch and my computer, a gentle greeting from the cloud cover above.

And we are in such desperate need for rain - any rain - right now.  Not that we have been so bad as years past, but we are already on severe water restrictions (not that such influences me at this point.  Other than my garden and select plants, I am operating under belief that if it cannot survive the climate here I am not going to make special efforts.  My money and my efforts are better spent on other things). I took a chance last night and did not water the garden in hopes that it would rain - even when the sky said otherwise to me.

The rain seems to be getting harder.  The ground now bears the true appearance of a rainstorm, not just the half-wet appearance of a storm which was all promise and no action.

As I sit here, it strikes me as terribly odd that dreadful things can happen - are happening - half a world away and yet I am sitting here on my porch enjoying a quiet rainstorm as if nothing else in the world was going on.  Surreal, almost.

Now the rain seems to be cutting back some, leaving only the draining sound of the water as it runs down the gutters and into the drainpipes as the major sound.  The cool wind is still making its way across the porch, perhaps a last gift as it moves off to some other porch and summer returns.

Would that all my mornings started this peacefully and full of life-nourishing grace.