Rain Came Down

After weeks of being teased with the promise of showers which never arrived it was almost startling to hear rain beginning to drum on the roof late on Thursday afternoon.  It was not a gentle rainfall. Wind rushed in from the southwest, driving the rain in sheets, lashing leaves from trees, 

The front steps glistened with wet; The porch roof provided little shelter when I stepped out with my camera. Horizontal rain!

The dishes alongside the white planter, used nightly to feed stray cats and raccoons, were quickly filled to overflowing.

Thunder rattled sending the house cats to hide in the rooms on the lower level.

The internet went out.

At the height of the storm I spent a few minutes on the screened east porch.

Hummingbird feeders hang under the wide eaves. As I stood there listening to the din of rain on the roof, two hummingbirds appeared. They hovered just beyond the sluicing sheets of rainwater, moving forward, then backing off, approaching the feeders again and again, only to be daunted by the pelting rain.

When the first heavy deluge was over, showers fell intermittently through the night.

I awoke at 6 a.m. this morning to dense fog. My bedroom window was open and the essence of the fog, grey and chilly, seemed to have seeped into my bones. The east porch was damp and unwelcoming, but the hummingbirds were making their usual whirring dives at the feeders.

I pulled on my wellies, rolling the cuffs of my jeans high, and went out, camera in hand to see what the wind and rain had left.

Coneflowers have seeded randomly in the east wall border; I've left them where they sprang up, including this clump too near the edge of the wall, toppled by the wind.

These coneflowers have been flattened across the nepeta.

In the west garden wildflower strips the delicate spindles of cosmos have been dashed to the ground.

  Double Knock-out roses have put out tentative new shoots since my severe pruning last month. Every leaf and thorn was spangled with raindrops; A dainty spiders web clung in tatters to the outermost branch.

Coneflowers and Monarda in the west wall garden.

The rain will give great encouragement to the weeds which have overtaken the stone-flagged path.

I took out my heavy-tined garden fork and made a few stabs at the earth behind the coneflowers where I plan to add more plants.

There is now depth of moisture to allow digging, but 10 minutes of prodding about while wrapped in a wet blanket of humid air convinced me that this was not a gardening kind of morning.

There have been rain showers moving through, distant thunder, riffles of wind. Sheets and towels pegged on the lines in the ground level covered porch had to be brought in still damp and stuffed in the dryer.

Tonight cooler air has plunged temperatures into the low 70's F. 

The veg garden is an expanse of sodden mud,; my sunflowers cant at unstable angles.

At dusk I dug several hills of Yukon Gold potatoes, rinsed off the clinging earth at the spigot by the greenhouse. 

If the soil dries enough to work by the first of the week, more beets and green beans will be planted in the hope of a late summer harvest.

July--high summer--heat--humidity. 

Sometimes, as now, a few hours when the air is freshly clean, offering revival of plant growth, bringing encouragement after the long drought. 

I shall try not to think of the burgeoning weeds.