Rain

It was so lovely to hear the rain this morning. It has rained quite heavily in Melbourne today and everything - people, birds, grass, trees, plants, soil - have lapped it up. Now everything seems quiet and peaceful - sustained and refreshed a little after the heatwave we've been through.

Somehow, it put me in mind of this gentle song.

Raindrops

We are having a lot of rain at the moment - on Monday night, all of April's average rain fall fell in one night. But I am enjoying it. It coats everything in a lovely moist freshness.

And I am getting quite a kick watching the daily antics of a band of magpies who have populated our yard of late. There was thirty of them late yesterday afternoon! I'm learning lots about them too from a beautiful old copy of the bird bible in Australia, What Bird Is That?, which I picked up for...dare I say it...a song at the local op-shop. Along with the Gould League's Birds of Victoria: Urban Areas and Frances Pitt's lovely Meet us in the Garden, I am heartened after having read awful stories like this one in the newspaper -

http://www.theage.com.au/environment/animals/zoo-to-help-grieving-swan-care-for-egg-20110408-1d7gp.html

When are we going to get over this idea that animals are somehow lesser than us? That they are more acceptable as a target for pointless violence?

Play misty for me

It has been really humid here this last week or so. Not blazing heat - sure, I'll acknowledge that - but humid, wherein a damp slick of perspiration is perpetually on your skin. So it's been lovely to have a little temperature drop overnight, a constant mist falling gently from the skies today and the plants getting a much needed drink. Poor babies. Although something is having a very nice meal in - or should I say of - my front yard: a bit of lemon balm for the mains and then a nibble of rose petal for dessert. Hmmm...Now that I look closely at the photo of the lemon balm, I see a telltale snail trail...

Rainy days

We have had a very wet weekend. But I for one am not complaining. As I think I have mentioned to you before, we live in a very dry part of the world and once summer comes, raindrops will be something of a fond and distant memory. So I am quite happy to hear the continual pitter-patter of rain on the roof and windows and to be basically limited to indoor pursuits for a couple of days.

To pass the time as I watched the rain fall, I stitched together Billy the Dog who's a little wonky and probably wouldn't pass the inspection of a halfway decent stitcher but I think he has rather a sweet disposition (for the pattern, see Miyako Kanamori's Sock and Glove); I baked a very nice chocolate cake which disappeared not long after this photo was taken (http://recipefinder.ninemsn.com.au/readersrecipes/77220/easy-chocolate-cake); I pottered about the house practicing with the settings on my digital camera (orchids courtesy of my Fellow Traveller) and I watched some very busy earthworms make their way through the rain...