Memories of Summer Rain!

It is raining today.

Surprisingly enough, summer rain is actually somewhat of a rarity here in the Pacific northwest. Well, at least here in Western Washington.

Sure, we get an occasional summer downpour in the middle of an afternoon here and there and it deposits just enough water for everything to get wet and the air to become humid but beyond that it's not actually rain that amounts to anything.

This time is different, there are actually thick gray clouds and a good constant soaking rain that's been falling for hours. And that's a good thing, because it has been a very dry summer and our lawn and our plants and the entire native environment can definitely use some water. Our current fire risk rating is at "5" which is the highest it can go.

I never minded rainy days during the summer too much when I was a kid. In fact sometimes they were among my favorite things.

Most often, I would be spending my summers with my auntie at her summer house, and being inside was an invitation to read a good book, or to do jigsaw puzzles or for me to work on my stamp collection.

Sometimes my auntie and I would just sit out under the cover on the front terrace and look out across the meadow in front of the house and just watch the rain fall, smelling the fresh air from the rain that had washed the dust off of all the leaves and made the bone dry ground a little bit wetter.

Mind you, summers in Denmark are a lot rainier than they are here in the Pacific Northwest — interestingly enough — even though it rains more here on aggregate, due to our extremely wet winters. There would often be summer rains, and sometimes we would have an entire week where it was nothing but gray and it would rain every day.

But we were generally good humored about it, because it meant we wouldn't need to water the gardens, and beyond that it also meant — particularly if we were getting on towards July and August — that it would be watering the nearby forest and soon it would be time for us to go to the woods and pick mushrooms.

Maybe this all sounds particularly simplistic, but in some sense of the word our summers were particularly simple compared to the experience of today. Of course the lens of perception of a child often makes things simpler than they really were, and I'm sure the adults had plenty of things to see to.

On the whole, though, people just took time off during the summer, and such events as a few rainy days didn't really ruin anything... and made us appreciate the sunshine that much more when it did come out.

So, when the rain started falling today, I took a little time out to just sit out on the back porch at our own place and watch the gray clouds roll by as the rain gently fell and the raindrops splashed in the puddles on the concrete pavement. And then there was that lovely smell of dry earth soaking up moisture after a long dry spell!

The rain is supposed to continue through the night, and then we will likely return to normal summer weather tomorrow. Until then I plan to enjoy this!

So will our garden. So far we've gotten about 0.55 inches and if it keeps going we might not have to water for a few days. Yay!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great week ahead!

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer comments, even if it sometimes takes a few days!

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Created at 2023-07-24 23:10 PDT
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