Rain!

It rained last night! Glorious thunderstorm about seven o’clock … with some actual moisture content as well — big raindrops falling on my garden. Glorious thunderstorm which cooled everything off a little, broke the relentless heat wave a tad, and has left my gardens looking perky and refreshed.

I missed thunderstorms when I was in California. There are many nice things about California, and many people like the mono-weather. It’s dependable. It’s reliable. You rarely have to worry about what the weather’s going to do, because if it’s May-October it’ll be sunny and dry and if it’s October-May it will probably rain. Oh, and you might have morning fog. When my grandmother moved to Burlingame in the 1930’s she says her house got very dirty because she kept waiting for a rainy day to clean. And it seemed a shame to spend a perfectly beautiful day cleaning when you could be out playing golf or riding. But here, we get afternoon thunderstorms, which I love … and since we’re not actually in the mountains here in Livingston, but up on a bench sort of looking over the mountains and out toward the plains, you can see the thunderstorms coming. Then they do, and the air changes, and it just feels like everything’s going to be a little bit better for a while ….