Heat. Heat
like the full month of July stuffing itself
into these few final days. We wilt, melt all along the sidewalk,
ice cream in hand. The babies crying. The girls
with their eyeliner smudged, everyone sticky
and swatting at flies.

Then the temperature drops,
suddenly,
and the wind rises
and lifts all our chins
and turns us all as sure as weathervanes,
the whole street paused, swung 'round
and tilted
west towards the onrushing clouds,
the first spattering drops of rain.

The rain!

Long-time readers and real-life friends will know my obsession with rain. For anyone just tuning in: I'm obsessed with rain. I love rain. When I moved to Vermont, the only thing I didn't like about that snow was that it wasn't rain.

Well, it's been raining a lot lately. Raining so much that I'm sick of it. Me! Rain! That's like saying I'm sick of pickles, or good chocolate, or reading. But it's rained every day for what feels like as long as I can remember. Two months, maybe? Since May? With perhaps a week's worth of not-raining days spread out all through that time.

Also, I've found that taking up farming has greatly reduced my fascination with huge, violent thunderstorms. Especially those featuring lightning and hail.

Despite the rain, our little farm looks gorgeous. The carrots are sizing up, the kale is hip-high and beautiful, cucumbers are flinging themselves everywhichway off the vines, we've got a little trickle of peas still coming along, and it's time to start stealing potatoes. We've been eating out of the garden more and more and more lately. The first batch of dilly beans has been finished and promptly consumed - we have two five-gallon buckets going now. Which is good, because I love me some dilly beans. It'll take more than five gallons before I'm sick of them.