Gratitude #3

They say the Eskimos have 50 words for snow - we on the West Coast should have at least that many for rain.

There is the all-day winter rain - the rain that pounds on the roof steadily, hour after hour, day after day. It become so ubiquitous that we almost forget it exists. There is the all-day drizzle - so fine it is like sitting inside a low cloud that had wrapped itself around the world and dulled all sound - leaving only the mist of suspended water droplets in air. There is the sudden spring shower - brief, warm, fragrant and a blessing to new seeds just planted in the freshly turned earth. There is January rain that sometimes feels more like slush and is sporadically coloured white. There is drizzle. There is the rare thunder and lightening rain, full of excitement and electricity. There is rain that falls briefly while the sun is shining, leaving diamond prisms on the leaves of salal and oregon grape.

There is rain in all its myriad forms here in the Pacific Northwest. We are blessed with this rain. How else to explain our towering firs and cedars and further south, the magnificent redwoods? Because of the rain we can spit a seed in the ground and have a fully grown alder tree two years later or a bed of lettuce ready for harvesting within four weeks.

I am grateful for the rain.