Night Rain

I have always loved the rain.  When I was a child growing up in New Mexico, I equally adored and was terrified by the intense summer thunderstorms that would dump rain and then disappear over the horizon.  I was always disappointed by that first streak of blue sky through the ragged clouds.  It simply couldn't rain enough for me.

So it is quite the irony that I should end up living my life in a climate where rain only falls during the winter months and the summers are dry, dusty bones.  Every few years we have a drought of some sort and then the pond shrinks down, sometimes to nothing, which is very depressing.  On those summers, the water table also draws down and our well can't cope with the demands we put on it.  Watering the garden becomes problematic when one must turn off the hose every thirty minutes in order for the well to have time to recharge.  Three years ago, the people who live beyond us, up on Gopher Ridge, had their well give out enough that they had to call in our county water truck to bring them water throughout the summer.  We had to have our own well drilled deeper.  As we have no other source of water out here, if ever we lose our water table, we'll be calling that water truck ourselves to fill our tank. 

Until this month, this has been the driest winter on record for this area -- we had less than five inches of rain for the entire season.  March, though, came bouncing in with several good-sized storms in a row and tonight it's raining again.  I'm so anxiously happy, that every few minutes I pop my head outside to see if it's still raining... 

Yup, still is!  I'm such a doof, that I point my camera into the rainy dark and snap away.  That little camera has quite the mighty flash. 

I don't suppose that anyone living in a "normal" climate where rain falls at decent intervals can really understand how bitterly I can view yet another sunny day. 

Give me the lovely splash and drip of runnels down the windowpanes. 

And please let springtime hold off for just a little while longer.