It rained today, a long, long soaking rain. It felt good. Our valley is green because it is watered by dozens of small streams flowing out of the mountains that lie mostly on our eastern flank, and they depend on the winter snows. This year there was a lot of it. Outside this valley to the north, west and south the steeply rolling hills are nearly treeless. Without irrigation the main crop would be sagebrush. In some places that’s mostly what there is, but this is also the land of the Snake and Columbia whose waters have been made to turn desert into productive farm land. Still, we can never forget that we are in are in the high desert of the Intermountain Plateau. Average precipitation around here, apart from the mountains, is between 10 and 15 inches, which is half or less of what one might expect in the Midwest, and a third or less of areas on the East coast. Our dry season will begin in June and we will not expect any significant rainfall again until sometime in September. The biblical references to the early rains and the late rains are very real out here. So today it rained, a beautiful, long soaking rain, and it was good, it was very, very good.
Indeed, a long, soaking, welcome rain can be a very peaceful, reassuring thing. I so enjoy sitting on the back porch sometimes during a soft, quiet shower, just reading and enjoying it. On the other hand, our Texas thunderstorms can really get your attention, especially in the middle of the night! 🙂
After spending a couple of 90 degree days sweating like, well who knows what, planting annuals before they went dead in their little shipping containers, I, too was grateful for a nice steady rain. I was most happy that I had cleaned up all of my gardening mess prior to the rain beginning……ms – your picture on the back porch is a very peaceful one:)