settling in

Living in a new neighborhood is always different. There are different little unspoken "rules" that everyone follows - unless one lives in a neighborhood with an HOA where the rules are not only spoken but are part of a written contract - and it takes some time (and close observation) to learn the rules. I feel vaguely uneasy about being forced by peer pressure to follow those rules once they are learned, but that is a topic for another day.

Since Ben and I moved here in early December, everyone was pretty much indoors most of the time - as were we, of course. But as winter faded into spring and we spent every minute we could outside, we noticed that we were, well, the only ones outside. No one else was trimming their shrubs or raking the dead grass from their front yards. That could have been because they had been taking care of their yards right along while ours had received minimal care for we didn't even know how many months.

As the weather warmed up and the grass greened and grew, we finally saw some activity. A lot of activity. Especially from our neighbor across the street with the beautifully-manicured lawn. We saw him outside on a weekly basis, wearing scrubs and a surgical mask as he mowed and edged and watered his lawn. I tell you, he has scrubs in every color of the rainbow. We saw other neighbors outside, as well, although many of them employ lawn care services to keep their yards beautiful. Ben and I just don't want to go that route, and not just because of the cost. I am increasingly uncomfortable with the heedless way our society uses harmful chemicals, and I just don't want to be a part of that. So, once again, we have one of the crappier front lawns instead of one of the nicer ones. Such is our fate, it seems.

The fact is, though, we spend very little time in the front yard. It is much smaller than the back yard, for one thing, and we have a very small front porch. When we are outside, we are, for the most part, "out back". Our large (to us) fenced-in backyard is where we have planted our garden, as well as the trees and shrubs we bought and had planted at great expense by a local nursery. It's where we take the dogs out to chase around and eat things. It's where we enjoy puttering around, planting and picking and pruning. We are out there alot. So here's another strange thing we have noticed: generally we are the only ones out there. We can see, like, six backyards from our back porch, and no on is ever outside doing anything. Seriously.

We worked hard to arrange our patio furniture just the way we wanted it on our little back porch, and when weather permits, we love to eat outside at the glass-topped table we brought from our house in Kent. What we really like to do on the back porch, however, is watch it rain. As I am sure I have mentioned, it really doesn't rain much here, but when the clouds have thickened and thunder has rumbled and rain finally seems imminent, Ben and the dogs and I hurry out the back door (well, we carry the dogs) and we all sit on the glider and wait for the first raindrops to hit the porch roof.

I don't think I can describe the pleasure it brings me to just watch it rain. Oh wait, I already have. One of the first posts I wrote on this blog four years ago detailed my love of a good, soaking summer rain. Lucky for me, Ben shares that enthusiasm. So the four of us sit out there and just watch it rain. If any of our neighbors see us, I'm sure by this time they just shake theirs heads and think, those new people are sitting out in the rain again. But, you know, that's just what we do, and they'll get used to us as we get used to them -- in their houses, somewhere, never coming outside.

le deluge

So I think I would like to re-visit the topic of summer rain. Here's what I have to say about it now: enough already! I don't think we're up to forty days and forty nights yet, but the birds and squirrels and chipmunks are starting to pair up in my back yard and look for a long boat ride.

I have to admit, the plants and flowers and lawn are loving all this rain. My hanging baskets have never looked this good so late in the summer, and the wisteria, which almost died in early April because of the snow and freezing rain, is now blooming. In August.

Rufus and I miss our daily walks, however, and need to continue them - for the sake of my health, as well as his. So now, I would like a nice, hot, sunny, dry, summer day, and I promise to rhapsodize about that for a while.

the rhythm of the falling rain

It has been a dry summer. The grass is crisp and brown. The only green in the lawn comes from the indestructible clover, with only its small, untidy heads standing tall enough to need mowed. The few times it has rained, I have been at work. Since I work in a cubicle, sometimes I don't even know that it is raining. I hate that. I hate it because I love to watch and smell and listen to the summer rain.

When I was a child, in those pre-air conditioned days, a drenching, cooling, summer rain was an event we all looked forward to. As the wind began to blow, my family gathered on the front porch, the lucky ones snagging seats on the porch swing. We loved it when the wind blew hard enough to rattle and toss the leaves on the maple trees, showing us their pale undersides. Not too hard, though, or we would be driven indoors when the rain finally began to fall. The first few drops hit the broad sandstone sidewalks with loud, fat splats. Then faster and faster and harder and harder the rain came, as we watched and listened. The air smells a certain way during the first moments of a summer rain. I think it is the smell of water soaking into sun-warmed dirt that has been dry for a long time. That smell doesn't linger long as it is replaced by the fresh, green smell of wet leaves and bark. The smell of rain, I guess I would call it.

We never knew the crescendo had been reached until the rain started, imperceptibly at first, to lessen. Too soon, I always thought, maybe it will rain harder again. And sometimes it did. But gradually, gradually, the rain grew slower and quieter as the storm moved on. The only sound we heard then was water dripping from every branch and leaf, every eave and overhang, up and down our street. The spell was broken and we all went back inside to tasks that had been laid aside at the promise of rain.

When we moved into this house seven years ago, the skies threatened rain all day long. I think a few lazy drops fell as the movers loaded everything we owned onto the van. But it didn't rain all that long, long day. Every box, every piece of furniture, made it safely inside our new home. And that night, as we lay in our familiar beds in unfamiliar rooms, the rain began to fall. We heard it on the awnings outside our bedroom windows, tentative, soft, at first, then faster and louder. The sound filled me with joy. It felt like a blessing.