It's raining....

It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring...

That's what we used to sing when I was a kid growing up in the midwest... Somebody once told me that the "old man" refered to in the nursery rhyme was the ancient God Wotan (aka Wodan & Odin) which means that children have been singing some version of that song for longer than I can even imagine...

Back in the midwest, we had long, dreary days of rain, and I learned to love them, to look at them as days to curl up with books and imagine myself anywhere in the world. Here in Texas, those long days of rain are rare and far between... I've lived here over 20 years, and I could probably count on one had the time we had those slow soaking rains that that could make the soy beans green and the corn grow so fast and so tall you could hear it grow.

Here, storms are the norm, big giant rumblers that blow through and drop inches of precipitation in matters of minutes... sometimes accompanied by straight-line winds, sometimes tornados... sometimes hail the size of baseballs. Some people say that if you save the hailstones and melt them into a round globe, you can gaze into it and see the future. I don't know, as I've never tried.

But overwhemingly, I'm grateful for the rain, no amount of hose watering can replace a good rain. The tree in my yard was beginning to shed a few leaves, and the plants were beginning to look a little droopy, and the evergreens were getting a little dull... and everything seemed to be collecting a layer of dust.

But I think my plumeria buds will be opening tomorrow.