Rain. When the temperatures are high and the plants are thirsty, rain is every gardener’s dream.
We want to hear the rain tapping on the roof and the windows, letting us know that it’s here. We want to go outside and look up and feel the cool water on our hot faces. We want to see raindrops glistening on our tomatoes and the delicate petals of our roses, we want to see soil dark with delicious, fresh water.
Some of us want to take our shoes off so we can sink our toes into the softened and refreshing dirt.
Too much, of course, can be a bad thing if you’re on low ground near a body of water. But when it’s not too much, why not celebrate it? Just be sure to help out any earthworms that have ended up on the pavement, because we want them in our gardens, too.
Congrats, rain, on winning Garden Star 🌟 of the week, and thank you for everything that you do.
You can read the vignette presented in this video here.
The video includes my artwork, and also some footage from our more recent whale watching tour last week. This time we were armed with Gravol and we didn’t get sick.
Here is a gallery with some pictures from the tour and with the artwork from the video.
The waterfall at Camping Chutes Fraser near La Malbaie, Quebec
There’s a waterfall across the laneway from our campsite. After our tent is set up, we cross the little road to have a look.
Wooden stairs lead down to to the flat rocks at the top of the waterfall. We stand on the rocks and admire the scene.
“We’ll probably get a better view from the bottom of the waterfall,” I say.
My husband Phil says, “Do you want to take that trail we saw when we came in?” I agree and we head down the path.
We quickly realize that the path we’re walking on is also a roadway. We squeeze onto the shoulder to let cars pass. We bend our knees generously as we make our way down the steep path through the woods.
At the bottom of the hill, there is a parking lot. A family in a pickup truck wants to park where my son is currently walking. They reach their arms out of the open windows and bang on the metal sides of the truck, making a loud, booming sound.
Not wanting him to get run over, I pull my son out of the way, but the truck is taking up the entire parking lot. Pedestrians scatter as the driver maneuvers around the small parking lot.
We get away from that mess and onto the trail. There is a wooden bridge crossing the river and a foot path leading us closer to the waterfall. I snap several pictures and take some videos from the bridge and from the path.
We find a picnic table near the base of the waterfall and sit down to enjoy its beauty. The cool mist tickles our hot faces, relieving us from the humidity that has been clinging to us all day.
Phil decides that it’s a good time for him to get some photographs as well. He takes out his phone and uses the camera to frame the waterfall. He is about to tap the button when the family from the pickup truck walks into his shot.
They’re wearing bathing suits, tank tops, and flip flops. A guy with a mop of white-blond hair and neon pink swim shorts takes his shirt off and poses in front of the waterfall.
He bares his teeth and sticks his tongue out as far as it will go. He sticks his pointer and pinky fingers up while holding the middle fingers down with his thumb. He poses with his right hand up and his left hand in front of his belly, with his left hand up and his right hand down, and with both hands in front of his hips.
When he is done having his picture taken, he puts his shirt back on.
When Phil sees the guy walk back to his family, he thinks that this is his chance. He takes his phone out again, but the other family members also want their pictures taken.
We notice rain drops and decide to walk back to the campsite. As we walk over the bridge, we see the guy climbing up the waterfall. His shorts are blazing like a neon sign in front of the white water and the grey rocks.
A few days later, we’re at home sitting on the couch. I ask Phil what his favourite part of the road trip was.
“I liked it when we were sitting on the picnic table and laughing at that guy,” he says. “You know, the one who was throwing horns in front of the waterfall while his girlfriend or whoever took his picture.”
The warm air is beginning to cool and the sky is turning a dark, navy blue. The first firefly blinks a hello. Soon small, soft lights are slowly blinking all around on a peaceful, lazy night. The fireflies are beautiful and magical, their lovely show makes their spectators feel calm and relaxed, just as they should feel on an early summer evening. If you’ve ever enjoyed a campfire or coasted a bicycle down a hill in the woods on a night during firefly season, then you know what I’m talking about.
Most people don’t know that the fireflies are using their special glow to lure smaller insects that are attracted to light, and even other fireflies who are looking to mate, to their vicinity so that they may slaughter and devour them.
A squirrel rests on its haunches next to a dumpster in the elementary school parking lot one morning when my son is still small. It has found a cherry danish, and what a find it is. The danish is almost as big as the squirrel. It clutches either side of this special treat with its two front paws. Its paws are getting sticky from the sugary glaze, but it is an uncultured rodent, so the squirrel doesn’t care. It nibbles on the cherry danish happily.
We hear a “Ssssscreeeeeeeee!” from the sky, like a pterodactyl announcing its presence in a dinosaur movie. There is an answering chorus of “Scree! Scree!” I look up to see a flock of seagulls coming for the squirrel with the cherry danish.
The squirrel sees them, too. It pauses for a couple of seconds so it can look at the seagulls in terror, and then it drops on all fours and runs with the very in-demand pastry grasped in its teeth.
My son and I cheer the squirrel on as we watch it running for its life across the parking lot and school yard. The shadow from the flock follows menacingly. And they’re gaining, they’re gaining, and—
The squirrel runs up a tree.
Maybe you’re thinking that a tree doesn’t seem like the best place to escape from a flock of birds, but this flock of birds has webbed feet that cannot cling to branches. All the seagulls can do is land on the ground next to the tree and look around angrily while the squirrel enjoys its hard-won cherry danish.
I’m eleven and we’ve recently moved to a new house. It’s a farmhouse, but we don’t own the farm, just the house.
I wander and explore until I wander off our property. I pass a barn and some other buildings, and then I see it: a big patch of long grass.
The grass reminds me of the opening theme of Little House on the Prairie where the girls are running through a meadow, their wholesome sun bonnets bouncing lazily behind them. I can hear the theme song as I look at it. I want to run through that grass.
I suppose that this is a good place in the story to tell you that I’m wearing flip-flops.
After checking to make sure that nobody is watching, I dive into the grass and run through it while bringing my knees up high. My arms are out to the sides, palms dancing forward. The theme song from Little House on the Prairie plays through my head blissfully and clearly.
My joyfulness is cut short when I feel a thick, long, legless body covered in scales brush roughly and quickly against my ankle and out of my way. I know exactly what it is, and neither of us is happy in that moment.
The Ingalls girls probably never felt the snakes rubbing against their ankles when they ran through the meadow. They were wearing leather boots and thick woollen stockings. (The girls, I mean. Not the snakes.)
It is always windy at my mother’s house because there are no trees or buildings to block the wind. Her house rises stubbornly out of the flat ground like a small mountain.
My mother is outside ripping weeds out of her garden. It is satisfying when the roots emerge. She shakes the dirt out of them and lays the unwelcome plants on the ground, but then she hears another sound under the sound of the wind.
Knock knock knock.
It kind of sounds like a woodpecker, but less rhythmic and more hollow.
She follows the sound. She walks around the house and sees a snake. Its scales are rough and dry and dark grey. It has a large snail stuck to the side of its head. It is banging the snail against the steps leading up to the deck, trying to knock it off.
My mother wants to help. She looks around for something that she can use to get the snail off of the snake’s head. She sees a hockey stick and picks it up.
The snake doesn’t know what my mother’s intentions are. It just sees a lady coming towards it with a hockey stick, and, because the snake has dealt with enough bullshit today, it swiftly darts under the deck and out of reach.
My husband sits in the backyard after a long day at work. The sun is hot. He shifts his chair into the shade. A light breeze swishes through the tree canopy overhead. A blue jay hops on the fence and twists its head to look at him before flying away again. A chipmunk ventures out and then dives into a hole behind a rock.
After forty-five minutes of peacefulness, the door slides open. I step outside. My husband watches as I walk across the yard, a thick and growing cloud following closely behind me. I sit in a chair next to him and the mosquitoes descend on both of us.
Raccoon Brontosaurus 