Tag Archives: rain

Bus in the Rain

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Soggy Walk

Soggy Walk

It was wet this morning when it was time to meet the school bus.  We went anyway.  That’s the rule apparently.

How about we just not walk down to meet the bus this morning?  Stay at home where it is cozy and dry?

Can’t.  Gotta go to school.  That’s the rule.

Umbrellas helped.  The big fat black one and the little green frog one. The wind blew. Pants were moistened. My daughter got on the bus with her arms wrapped about her.  Smart kid.

Walking back to the house with her brother was wetter.  We walked into the wind.  He hardly noticed.  He wanted to stay out, in fact.  At another time I would have encouraged it. Get wet!  Romp in the rain!  Play in the puddles! But we had to go.  The clock is a cruel master.

The rain had stopped by the end of the school day.  The sun brightened the tops of the clouds.  My daughter and I walked back, dry. We laughed at her water bottle; it seems the bottom came unglued.  “We’ll have to glue gun it,” she tells me. Indeed. We also laughed at her description of playing Twister with her classmates.  She was the first one out.  She didn’t mind.

It rains and your pants get wet.  You fall down first in the game.  Don’t mind that.  There is laughing and playing to be done.

Up Too Early?

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I couldn’t sleep.  The clock said 5:30.  Then my son stirred and I went in to see him.  He went back to sleep.  I didn’t.  I considered sitting outside for a while.  It’s too wet.  It rained and rained last night.  More rain.

I finished reading Steinbeck’s Winter of Our Discontent recently.  It takes place in 1960.  A different time.  I can’t stop thinking about it.  The story line is not particularly complex but the characters are so deeply drawn that the story is a deep one.  Our hero leads a happy life, one of simplicity and ease but his family and others, and himself, point out how his family was once a great one in the town and how he once had a fortune.  This leads him to make some choices to “get rich.”  I figured, half way through, that the story would have one of two endings.  Either he succeeds at getting rich and shows everyone that being a good guy can pay off, or he crashes and burns and we learn how only the ruthless can succeed.

Like life, the ending isn’t so simple.  He does manage to overcome some challenges and find a way to increase his financial resources.  He “gets rich.”  The story, however, tangles with two big questions for me.  What is really important in life?  And what is the nature of morality?  Before he began to make any changes to make his new fortune, our hero is a grocery clerk, the only one in the local store (remember this is 1960 and the interstate highway system that feeds today’s supermarkets is in its infancy), and he is happy, mostly.  His relationships with his friends and neighbors are genuine and positive.  Those become complicated and darker.  He keeps secrets from his wife.  His son, who already has the idea that one can make it in the world by cheating, sees that maybe hard work isn’t necessary after all.

The hero, Ethan Allen Hawley, has two teenaged children and a devoted and loving wife.  I couldn’t help imagining my own life when my two children grow just slightly older.  What will my relationship with those three most important people in my life be like?  How will the choices I make affect them?  What will I teach my children with the choices I make about work, money, love, friendship?  Ethan makes some decisions that today would seem acceptable to most people, almost 50 years later, but he struggles with them so much he considers suicide.  Can one get rich and maintain a true moral compass?  Can one do business with someone and still remain friends?  Why do we need to get rich anyway?

I guess part of the reason Ethan stands out for me is that he is a thinker.  He really thinks about all the pieces of his life.  He carefully considers how every decision, every act, will affect otehrs.  When his world is the simple one of a grocery clerk, the answers are simple ones.  Once he starts making big changes, his thinking becomes tangled.  He still thinks a lot but it means lots of mental wrestling, rather than mental play.  Things aren’t so simple.  I guess I can relate to that.  I tend to think a lot as well.  If I were the one opening the grocery store, I can imagine myself, like Ethan, sermonizing to the canned goods.  Talking aloud helps me think better, as it does for our hero.

I keep thinking now, about the book, about my own choices, about where I might be headed.  I think about morality.  What is good?  How does one live the decent life?  And what is that anyway?  I am going away for a week with my family.  I will have some time to ponder these questions.  My children are awake now.  Water still drips from the eaves.  Time to make coffee.  This day, at least, will be one filled with thought, but hopefully, no great choices to make.  Drip drip, the rain falls.  Then everything dries.  And then, at a time no one can say, it will rain again.

Rain Again

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I made some good headway on the old house painring project today.  I sanded and made, generally, a huge mess.  I ended up covered in dust.  Those respirator masks are brilliant I tell you.  I am working on two sides, already scraped, and I got a good deal of the way to sanding all of it when the sander busted.  The pad that holds the sanding disks flew off, spinning into the oregano plants.  That was the end of it.

I went into town and got a new pad, and some more sanding disks, and while I was at it a piece of lumber to replace one corner board on the garage.  Rain started falling on the way home.  This is turning out to be a slow project.

It keeps raining.  We did have a clear day on Thursday, and yesterday it rained just for a brief shower.  But it has been wet.  Not ideal for an outdoor painting project.  Maybe tomorrow will be dry again.

For now I will kick back with an adult beverage and wait.  Summer is a time to get things done.  It seems also to be a time for patience.  I guess that means chilling for a bit.  I can live with that.

Perfect Rainbow Spot

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July Rainbow

July Rainbow

Once thunderstorm season comes our way, we get rainbows.  Late in the day, the sun slants low across the fields.  When scattered showers fall, the light shines through the falling water and it glows.  A rainbow arcs across the sky.  Last night as the children were falling asleep, rain fell through the sun.  The rainbow lasted a half hour or so.  It was one of the longest lasting I have seen.  We will have more.  This is a perfect spot for rainbows.

Slow Storm

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All day rain has hinted that it might arrive.  The sun shone early but even then clouds loomed in the west.  I dried a load of clothes on the line and hung a second later in the day than I wanted.  Nonetheless, the second batch got mostly dry before I gave up watching the sky and took it down.  I needn’t have bothered, as the rain held off and the clothes on the line would have dried just fine before the rain started.  Even now, hours later, the rain falls sporadically.

Thunder rumbles to the west and north.  It, too, has been threatening arrival.  Our house is nestled up to a knoll just to our west so we don’t always see weather arriving until it is close.  This storm is a slow mover so we have known of its approach for hours.  So far it’s all talk.  The radar map shows some heavy rain over the hill, but it seems to be managing to avoid us.  Was it something I said?

The children, of course, have some trepidation about a storm arriving when they are in bed.  They find it hard to fall asleep, even though no storm is here and it may not arrive at all.  They lie awake, wondering how hard it will hit, wondering what we will all do if the power fails, wondering what damage will result if the wind howls.  Their imaginations exaggerate.

Rain would be good.  I did not water the garden today, thinking rain would fall at some point.  It seems to be taking a while to get around to it.  Next Tuesday I plan to scout out a second Mountain Birdwatch route on Burnt Rock Mountain.   I saw that the route was open and I enjoy my route on Ricker Peak so much that I figured I would try to fit in a second one.  Problem is I need to find the points in the light so that when I hike up in the dark I will be able to find them when I survey the route for real.  Rain tonight would be great, but on Tuesday it would be a bummer.

The light fades and rain trickles down.  The clothes are in.  The children will drift off soon enough.  The day quiets.  And the storm sidles its way across the Champlain Valley.  Sooner or later it will settle in right here.

Rain Situation

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It isn’t raining at the moment.  Well, maybe it is raining a little, but barely.  The sun is setting and we have that rare light when the bright sun shines under the clouds, coloring them steel gray and blasting the green hills with brightness.  It won’t last long.  The distant mountain tops are bright and I can see that rain falls there, and the shadows are creeping.

It has rained for a couple of days straight.  I planted flower seeds with the children on Tuesday afternoon, before dinner.  Then it rained.  And rained.  It is Friday now, about the same hour we planted the seeds.  Three days of wet.  I think they have gotten enough water to germinate.

I have not needed to uncoil the hose to water the garden.  In fact, I have been afraid that the garden has been getting too much water.  Last summer we had a wet spell that ruined some of our crops, including carrots.  They rotted in the ground.  Nothing I planted is so advanced that it will rot but this rain might keep some seeds from starting as I would like.  We’ll have to see what happens.

A hermit thrush tosses out its flutey voice over the wet trees behind the house.   It is an unassuming bird, what you might call an LBJ, a Little Brown Jobber, so similar to so many other bland birds.  Its voice, however, stops me at times.  Milton and Shakespeare and all those other dead English bards wrote about the nightingale, another thrush, whose voice trilled through the woods with sweetness.  I am sure they would have written their odes to the hermit thrush had they lived in Vermont.

We will likely get more rain showers over the next couple of days, but I am hoping the sun will come out to feed the new leaves on our squash plants and to warm the soil so the flowers will grow.  But that won’t happen until tomorrow.  Right now the land quiets.  The air is still, filled with moisture, heavy.  A robin adds to the thrush’s song.  Spring peepers and wood frogs sing out from the pond over the hill.  The light grows grayer.

It is not raining, but the rain has set the scene for a perfect early evening in spring.  Time to slide on some boots and head out there to smell it and feel it.

Full On Spring

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Not Turkeys

Not Turkeys

A few days ago I noted that, from a distance, some newly installed culverts looked like turkeys.  I went and checked them out today and, as you can see, they are not turkeys.  They are not, as I also suggested, made of metal.  They are full on plastic.

Leaves Unfolding

Leaves Unfolding

The trees around here are not leafing out in all their spring glory.  This tree at the end of our driveway has been busting green across the blue sky.  The orioles seem to like this one in particular.

Flooded Fields

Flooded Fields

It rained like stink last night and yesterday afternoon.  We drove home from Burlington My great-grandmother in-law’s 90th birthday celebration)  in the rain to meet our babysitter. The children were asleep, lulled by the drops tickling the windows.  This morning the fields around and about were flooded.  The beavers and the geese are loving that.

Laplatte River Running High

Laplatte River Running High

The river was full this morning as well–more than your usual CFS flowing under the bridge.  Our friend Kathy came for the night but she had to leave before we took this walk.  She arrived just before 2:30 AM from a late flight to the Burlington airport.  She left about 10:30.  Only and eight hour visit and most of that asleep.  I trust she enjoyed the fine spring day with her daughter when she got home to the Upper Valley.  It would be hard not to enjoy this day.  It was full on spring and, I am pretty sure this is true everywhere, was plain old beautiful.

Wind and Rain

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Apparently a tornado hit Vermont this past Saturday.  That doesn’t happen all that often–once every couple of years or so.  Of course, the next week there were reports of tornadoes in Florida.  That is a little more common, I guess.  Hopefully we won’t have any twisters around these parts for a couple of years.  As odds go, we won’t.

Today wasn’t twister weather but it was windy.  Way windy.  More than one friend reported that the interstate was treacherous.  Driving myself today I experienced the strong winds.  It was two hands on the wheel driving for sure.

On the way to school it was a little less windy.  I said to my son that it would be a good time to fly a kite.  He then said that he would be flying kites with the other children at school.  He was convinced that they would, even though they don’t have a good spot for that activity.  After school he reported that no kites were flown, but the wind did knock him out of the sandbox and he “fell down hard right here” as he pointed to his hip.  Plus wind blew sand in his eyes.  He recovered nicely.

I made the mistake of leaving a mini propane bottle on the back deck this morning.  It blew off the deck sometime today and landed on a rock.  It got dented.  That doesn’t seem safe.  No harm done so far, however.  Just in case we have an explosion, I moved it to the other side of the house.  Safety first and all that.

It did rain today, quite hard at times.  I did not water the garden because of the rain, but with the wind drying things out in between showers, the beds probably didn’t get much hydration.  There is always tomorrow.  I’m not going out there now.  A tree might fall on me.  That would be unfortunate.  How would I read books to the children from outside, pinned under a tree?  How would I finish the beer I started?  How could I finish my crossword puzzle, what with rain spoiling the pages?

I’m telling you, this weather is rough.  A guy needs to be careful with this wind and rain.  The children and I spotted a bright orange oriole in the apple tree this morning.  It was our first of the season.  I hope it and it’s kin are careful out there.  I wouldn’t want it to be our last sighting.  That, too, would be unfortunate.

Rained Out Again but Enjoying the Rain

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My daughter has been participating on a T-ball team (sort of like baseball, except they have the option to bat off a T).  So far she has had only two practices.  Four have been scheduled.  Two have been rained out, including tonight.  The kids are supposed to have a game next Tuesday.  That will be interesting.  Most of the kids don’t know the rules;  they do not know, for example, that touching the bases is part of the deal.  But it’s really about having fun anyway.

Instead of going to T-ball, my children played in the rain instead.  First, on the way home from my son’s school, they played with the windows.  They put them down to clear off the rain, which worked for all of three seconds.  Then they decided to put them down every time a car passed.  They got pretty wet but they were laughing so hard I figured it was OK to let a little moisture into the vehicle.

By the time we got home they were all fired up to run around outside in swim suits.  So they did.  They got soggy and muddy, playing in puddles and sliding down the slide.  They were soaked and dirty when they came in, just in time for a warm dinner.  They really wanted hot chocolate, to get cozy as they put it.  We waited until after dinner for the hot chocolate, then curled up by the fire with jammies.

Soon it will be time to head up for showers and bed.  The rain will likely continue into the evening.  I love going to bed when the rain falls.  I even enjoyed walking out to meet the bus this morning, listening to the rain on the umbrella and smelling the new blossoms.  Lilacs and apple blossoms are out now and the air smells sweet when the rain falls.

I don’t have to water the garden these days.  I just have to sit and watch the rain fall on the soil.  The children know that rain means the garden gets enough to drink, so they are happy when the skies gray and spill over.  Plus, they get to romp in the puddles.  So we had no T-ball practice today, but we all enjoyed what we got anyway.  We’ll get back to the field next week.

Moisture in Multiple Forms

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It is raining.  Not a warm spring rain, but a cold rain.  It is damp.  Chilly.  It is getting dark.  We have a fire in the stove.  Our house is cozy.

The ground is saturated.  The streams and gullies are full.  The lawn has pools.  The children have fun jumping in the drainage ditch next to the driveway.  It is wet.

Yesterday it snowed.  We woke to white, on the ground and falling.  It came down heavily for a while.  By afternoon it had melted.  We got mud.  The roads were wet when I ran.  Soggy.  I got dirty from splashing muck.

A few days ago we had fog.  Rain, snow, mud, fog.  Things are wet all over.  The ground has thawed out for the most part.  It won’t be long before things start to dry, but today we have moisture.

It’s Sog City.  I am glad to be inside.  It will feel good to crawl into bed tonight.  I might just do it earlier than usual.  Read a good book and conk out.  That way I can get up early and run.  Or not.  If it is still raining, I just might stay under the covers, safe from all the water beasts.