Intermittent showers overnight, then a lull at dawn during which we were able to get in a beach walk under dark, rolling clouds.  Substantial rain began as we ascended the dune walkover.  Garden and St Francis quite pleased.  Everything is up and looking good so far.  Peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, crook-neck, cantaloupe, cucumbers, potatoes, onions, parsley, cilantro, dill, oregano, rosemary, mint, basil, okra, radishes, and lettuce.  Sounds like a lot, but there’s not a lot of each.  Small space gardening. The rain should soak into the hay and keep things wet for days.  That’s the idea, anyway.  Rain barrels now full as well.

Needing and anticipating rain for a purpose, as in nurturing a garden, is its own kind of game, and one in which I participate with gusto.  But I’ve also always thought rain was just about the coolest thing going, for its own sake.  Very early on I was fascinated with  the notion of water falling out of the sky.  That simple (not really) act of physics, which we take for granted, has always seemed to me to be the most visible, concrete expression of magic in the world.  Water falling from the sky.  Come on, really?  And the forms in which it appears:  misty, individualized but gentle, hard, driven by wind, accompanied by thunder and lightning, all day drizzle, fast-moving storm, each presentation with its own mood and character. 

As I’ve mentioned, because of the workings of the opposing sea breezes, we don’t get the clock-work afternoon summer thunder showers here on Skinny Island we used to experience inland, and I miss that.  You can see and hear them stacking up and dying out just to our west.  Sometimes we’ll go out and try to urge them through, billowing dark clouds a mile off, bright blue sky overhead.  And sometimes it works.

Having a thunderstorm pass over and then watching it move out to sea is one of the great treats of living here.  Lightning strikes over water, the curved sweep of gray rain against a white sky over olive water.  Beautiful.  We remain hopeful of spotting a waterspout or two before the curtain falls.  Years ago, while surfing with my son down near the south end of the island, we saw one about a mile out.  You could clearly see the wild disturbance of its contact with the surface,  and hear the roar, the column snaking up into the storm as it ripped to the south.  Most impressive. 

I guess I’m a weather junkie; this weather; the clash of cool and warm moist air that gives us such frequent atmospheric calamity.  But I digress.  Right now, I’m just glad the garden is getting some rain.

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