While the veil lifts

This rain ..... after so much cold winter, could drive a sun loving person mad. I muster up the last ounce of creative coping that I have left, take my camera and my eight - almost nine - year old Son outside. I decided we were going to capture raindrops - something I should mark as a ritual because I seem to do it unknowingly every year. Some of the wonders that show up when you slow down and pay close attention, are powerful anesthesia to numb fingers and disarm threatening clouds. On our drive home, the sun shone so bright at twilight it was like a giant Earth yawn. The Haze over the river began to split open, revealing the glittering treetops, and the most incredible double rainbow arching clear across the sky, as if signaling the arrival of a seasonal daybreak and anointing my house. My husband took a photo of if right from our deck.

On our hunt for raindrops through the yard, we came across .....

The Luna moth sleeping at our livingroom window.................

The salvia in full operatic expression.............
Red Clover leaves impersonating lady's mantle................
The Wormwood, silvery as the full moon .......
Droplets on a red clover leaf, tiny mirrors into magic........

The bloodroot jungle at twilight, with seed pods ready to ripen.......
The awakening sky, a view from my deck..................
Little perfumed fairies canopied by their trusty leaves ........
A very bewitching Sage, almost hiding her pet spider but not quite........
The wet air makes an invisible infusion, sending ribbons of scent to catch you before you pass. The Russian olives are practically whoring themselves with their profusion of honey sweet flowers. The Ground ivy refreshes the sleepy weed-looker, and provides one of the first good bee meals of the season. The Cleavers are flowering, the Iris have shown up, and the chives are sending out her blushing buds like a tease, waiting to be courted into flowering.

Now, if only the good weather would come. There seems to be so little of it here that I am crazed and starving for it. We get about four months of the year to revel in Nature's bounty, and that's it. It's four months of crazed flower stalking, leaf watching, medicine making, weed eating, wild presence. Or should I say, presents.