Herd About It?

by Ana Grarian

 We’ve had about 3/4 of an inch of rain in the last eight hours. It started heavy with some thunder and lightening late last night, and kept up a steady pace all night long. It was such a relief to wake up and hear it still drumming on the roof. The rain started just before midnight. I sat in the corner of the porch where most of the blowing wet did not reach me, and I was happy to have a towel around my shoulders for the cool breeze. We haven’t had much in the way of a cool breeze lately.

The birds, though wet and a bit natty looking, are singing as they fly back and forth to the feeder. 

 We are supposed to have a few days of this weather, and I hope we do. The trees are desperate for it. A giant maple on my block has many dead branches we will have to watch out for this winter. Last night while swimming in the ravine we watched as small stones were falling from the cliff side. I don’t know if that was just a normal shedding, or if the extended drought has meant that the dirt is not holding things together as tightly. A medium sized maple fell off the lower wall, but that may just mean it had become too tall and top heavy for the precarious hold its roots could get in the shale. The water felt wonderful, crazy warm for our area, but cool enough to soak out all the excess heat from my muscles and ease my brain. We really have such a lovely space here.

The ravine I swim in is somewhat different this summer. I don’t know if some of the big rains we had last fall, pushed the stones into new formations that made for a better swimming area, or if some folks have made a concerted effort to move stones to improve the swimming area. I would like to do the same further down and make a second area, away from the crowds. We have the creek space here, that it is really sad we don’t have small swimming holes every few blocks. I’m sure that’s the way it would have been in the ‘old days’. I’m just happy to be within a few blocks of this one.