Rain is General . . .

. . . all over my town.

Last night I fell asleep with the last paragraph of "The Dead" in my head, to the sound of continuing rain. Even though I know of at least three places in my house that aren't dealing well with it (not the roof, thank goodness) I'm delighted to see and hear and, yes, feel it.

What you aren't going to be able to see are all the pictures I took of me carefully transplanting paste tomatoes from their soil "blocks" to big pots, using lots of new potting soil. As the day I was doing it had air as soft as a baby's bottom, I felt foolish -- shouldn't I just be popping them in the ground? The next night, I had my answer. The temperature dropped back into the forties, and then the skies opened. I had taken careful pictures, but the camera was loaded with videos of my kids doing something they probably shouldn't, and it took too long to download. Then I mislaid the camera and it hasn't shown up again. Yes, I live in a house where these things happen.

Today is the second day of truly pissing down rain. The rain barrels are filling up, and the things out in the garden already are pretty cheerful, as am I, since I laid sod three weeks ago and now I'm not using bathwater to keep it alive, while prancing around in my jammies.

Alas, I will not be spending the day curled up on the couch knitting with tea in reach. It's Drive Around Like A Homeschooling Parent Day, so hooray for rain gear.

"Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
― James Joyce, Dubliners