The voice of rain

As I was walking in the rain today I listened to the voice of rain upon my umbrella. It whispered to me of far away and secret things. The clouds swirled and mist flowed across the top of Mount Fielder. I breathed deep the faint aromas of winter. The air was clean, pure. The smells were faint ghosts, echoes of summer lawn mowing and watermelon seed spitting. Pines battered by the wind gave up a perfume of different memories.

The road had become packed by the few days of warmer weather before the rains came. After the frost it was loose and smooshy, thank goodness the rains held off a couple days. As it is, only a little sand and clay has washed to the bend in the driveway where dad and I cut a waterbar diverting the rivulet beneath the redwood trees.

We didn't get the greenhouse up before the rains returned but we got everything ready for the first good day. All we have left is to drive the tractor along the south side to bury that edge and pack it down and to tie off a few more retaining ropes. Then we will turn on the fan and return to our 140 by 35 feet of glorious artificial spring.

Yesterday morning when mom, dad and I took Sparky for a walk there was a gorgeous red tail hawk riding a thermal rising from our neighbors pasture. When we first saw him he was only about a hundred feet off the ground but in only a short while he ascended on spirals of sun and air to almost vanish in the blue sky. Then, just before he was too high to see, he dove out of the thermal and sped away to the southwest.