Another chilly one

 

The furnace cranked up again this morning. We broke a record yesterday for the coldest, wettest May 12th. A rare day when I didn't leave the house.

But the sun is coming up golden this morning. The birds are chirping and it will be beautiful after all that rain. The weather people are teasing us with a possible warm-up in the northwest by Memorial Day, but no one believes it yet. These winter-like storms keep cranking down from the Gulf of Alaska.

My sister sent a picture of their Yellow Bell shrub on her Las Vegas patio. What they wouldn't give for a some of this moisture in the desert southwest. The entire west is parched. They say it would take 17 years of above-normal rainfall and snow pack to refill Lake Mead. More unpleasant things are likely to be revealed on the lake bed.  

But here, the fragrance of wet lilacs outside the front door. A blessing and a reminder to enjoy each precious day, rain or shine.

After a Month of Rain
by Linda Pastan

Everything I thought I wanted 
is right here, 
particularly when the sun 
is making such a comeback,

and the lilac engorged 
with purple has recovered 
from its severe pruning, 
and you will be back soon

to dispel whatever it is 
that overtakes me like leaf blight, 
even on a day like this. I can still 
hear remnants of the rain

in the swollen stream 
behind the house, in the faint 
dripping under the eaves, 
persistent as memory.

And all the things I didn’t think 
I wanted, cut like the lilac back 
to the root, push up again 
from underground.