The first rain in weeks begins tapping on the roof at dawn. Then it’s here in a rush, the bone-dry leaf duff rattling into a roar.
rain
A shimmer of rain, which the roof gathers into a smattering of drips. A pileated woodpecker flies over, yelling its head off. A pair of catbirds exchange notes.
Rain starts at sunrise and tapers off a half hour later. In its wake: phoebe, pewee, goldfinch, Carolina wren. A cedar waxwing’s whistle.
Overcast and damp. A hummingbird visits the jewelweed growing in the drip line from the roof, which still drips from a shower at dawn. A wood thrush sings.
Overcast at sunrise. Each breeze brings a brief shower from a midnight storm. A mosquito wallows in the long hair of my forearm.
Rain tapering off by eight. Even the fog looks green. Wild garlic plants in the yard are beginning to straighten, heads going up like herons trying to swallow large fish.
Rain and fog. I’m beginning to feel sorry for the 17-year cicadas whose one summer in the sun has so far been so sodden. I watch one go motoring past, wings mirroring the white sky.
An intensely green lushness makes an orphan out of the brown pile of juniper cuttings at the woods’ edge—last winter’s one spot of green. At 7:10, in the pouring rain, the first cicada starts up.
Rain at dawn tapering off into another patter alongside the red-eyed vireo’s. Wood thrushes sing back and forth. From deep in the lilac, a house finch lets loose.
Rain at sunrise. A flower longhorn beetle takes refuge under the porch, landing beside my mug. The crash of a falling limb.
The rain has stopped, but everything drips. In the splay of dying daffodil leaves below the porch, glowing white dewberry blossoms.
Cold rain. The wind from a distant storm stirs the bright green, half-grown walnut leaves, moving on into the darker greens of the forest.
Birds still singing in a downpour: scarlet tanager, common yellowthroat, Acadian flycatcher, great-crested flycatcher… Fronds of bracken tremble as if readying for flight.
It’s been raining for hours, drumming on the leaves and dripping from the furred tongues of irises, which sway ever so slightly on their tall stalks.