Rain.
All it does is rain.
I’m sitting on the covered front porch of our white farmhouse, a misty, lacy rain descending over a field of white, green, orange, red and blue. It’s June 23rd and the wildflowers are in bloom on the hayfield that surrounds our home on the banks of the Cloquet River. I’m deep into my second week of being off work: I was supposed to be off this week on vacation, which I am. But that I ended up being off most of last week, to tend to my dieing mother-in-law and my wife, and to attend my mother-in-law’s wake and her funeral, well, that was unexpected.
Unexpected? Don’t humans know? Don’t we appreciate that, no matter how far we fly or drive away from home, no matter what religion we follow, no matter how fit we keep ourselves, death is always to be expected? In fact, if you’re a Christian, like I purport to be, death is not only known: It should be welcomed because Christians, of all the faithful, know what comes next. At least, that’s what we tell ourselves.
But the rain. The damn rain. It has been falling since late last week. Jack’s soccer and baseball schedules have been tanked by the deluge. Our vegetable garden (apparently a favorite gathering site for every black hearted crow in NE Minnesota) has been so wet, only the potatoes seem to enjoy the bath. There are no corn stalks growing. There’s been no sun. And it’s far too long into our eighty-day growing season to plant new seeds. My wife has been waiting to repair her water garden (it sprung a leak but, due to the rain, has stayed full) but can’t because…Guess what? It’s been raining!
As I sit on the front porch and watch a thin pewter sheen descend over color, Daisey, our black lab-and-something-else-mix sleeps on her side on the cool boards of the porch. The dog snores contentedly on a deck that needs attention.
I could stain the porch boards if the rain would stop.
The air is cool. In that sense, the weather is a temporary blessing: There are no mosquitoes.
But just wait. With every pot hole and ditch full to the brim, those little bastards will be hatching a freakin’ armada of nuisance whenever the sun decides to shine…
Far across the wet pasture, I watch as a doe and her spotted fawn stop their traverse of the green grass and the abundant color of the newly bloomed wildflowers. The mother deer spreads her legs. The newborn ducks beneath its mother’s belly and begins to nurse. As the fawn suckles, the doe licks her offspring, cleaning the fawn of ticks and whatever other vermin fawns accumulate in the forest. After a few minutes, the deer wander into the aspen stand at the far edge of the grass and I pick up a magazine to read.
I’ve just finished reading Ayn Rand’s massive tome, The Fountainhead (See below for a review or click on the “Book Reviews” tab above). So as I sit in my rocking chair (now that I am of suitable age to enjoy it), my reading material is shorter fare: The Sun magazine. I brought a collection of Dostoevsky’s short stories with me onto the porch as I well. But I can’t get started on his work. The weather, the funeral, the last book event I attended (Land of the Loon in Virginia, MN: You can read about that disaster below): They’ve all knocked me down to a point where I really don’t need to read depressing Russian fiction, no matter how well-written. So I concentrate on articles, poems, and essays in The Sun. For those of you who’ve never read it, be advised: The Sun can be the most depressing magazine in the world. Beautifully written but depressing. Still, I find the magazine is perfect for this day, a day of constant rain: Because the pieces are short, my eyes are able to wander.
The gray sky is filled with birds. No, not the ugly, cawing black bastards that are eating my garden. Flits of yellow (male goldfinches) chase their less colorful female consorts up and over and through trees. The finches love our bird feeders (when not being bossed about by noisy blue jays) and come to visit in flocks. Here and there, the muted pink of a male purple finch darts in and out of the mist. The heavy drone of ruby-throated hummingbirds echoes against the porch ceiling as the tiny birds hover and suck nectar from hanging feeders. Red-winged blackbirds dive; their orange and yellow wing patches vibrant against a drab sky. Above the hayfield, barn swallows chase flying bugs. To the west, a solitary osprey hovers over the Cloquet River, searching the water for fish, its distant cry a mere peep. A massive bald eagle alights from the a white pine standing next to the river, makes a wide turn, checks out the field, and then follows the river downstream. A male eastern bluebird (whose color is subdued and nearly absent until he takes flight) lands on the porch railing within my reach.
Long into the day, the sky finally lets up. Mind you, the gray doesn’t leave: The rain simply stops falling. Jack and I wander onto the wet grass of our backyard to toss a ball. After we warm up, he takes his place a fair distance away. I hit a baseball to him: Towering flies. Line drives. Grounders. He catches some. He misses some. We change positions. I toss him a tennis ball: my impersonation of an out-of-shape relief pitcher. He clobbers the first pitch and rockets a line drive at my face. I duck. The ball skids across wet grass and sheds water like a tire on wet pavement.
We call it a day. I reclaim my rocking chair. There’s nothing scheduled: no appointments or events to attend. I return to The Sun hoping and praying that tomorrow, the actual sun will show itself.
Peace.
Mark
