Beautiful rain – for some

In so many parts of the world right now people are suffering from a deluge of rain beyond manageable proportions. I woke this morning to a plea for donations from the British Red Cross for the Hurricane Appeal in the aftermath of Gustav and Hanna. Our prays go out to all the families affected and we hope that help is quickly forthcoming and days of sunshine and flowers return soon.

In my birth land of Britain people are suffering too with hundreds of homes in Northumberland flooded. I’ve recently started reading the blog Ruta’s Ramblings: Notes from North Devon and she has a talent for capturing the imagery of the changing weather in the beauty of the surrounding countryside (and a whole lot more!). Last year we were home in the UK for a visit and our holiday met with some torrential downpours and flooding; but of course we weren’t deterred from having fun (and the weather wasn’t all bad)!

Today I woke to hear the rain hammering down on the tin roof (makes it sound like we live in a shack!). We’ve had a huge amount of rain this past week – but thankfully the wind hasn’t been too harsh and the temperatures perfectly amicable. The British have a capacity to talk about the rain with the equivalent gusto of an Eskimo talking about snow. My favourite description of rain is, ‘It’s spitting’! And I know Brits reading this post will have many of their own choice descriptions for the wet stuff. There is some rain I actually love and today was one of those days. The air was calm, it wasn’t cold and there was an ethereal quality to its beauty in our garden.

The vegetation was rich in colour and new buds on our young silver birch tree symbolized the season of rebirth after the winter.

I love the feel of the rain on my skin and the feeling of being so very alive and a part of something so much bigger than I can possibly contain within myself. Anyway, Sophie was calling me in and laughing at me dancing in the rain – but she knows that feeling of joy too. At school drop off and pick up this week she’s rejoiced in splashing in the puddles and lingering to feel the water that feeds our thirst and cleanses our skin (and provides hydro-power for over 70% of New Zealand’s electricity supply).

Like any garden I have my favourite places to simply ‘be’.

The fairy path around the Norfolk Pine…

The old-railway sleeper bench surrounded in native plants and bathed in sunshine in the summer…

And then there’s the patio of BBQ heaven in the summer months!

Everything is growing so fast in the garden, but is totally water-logged too – perfect for some bare-foot walking in the mud 🙂

It will soon be time to plant the sunflower seeds we took from our best sunflower last year; which I’ve only just found from the ‘safe’ place I’d hidden them in last year. Charli’s fairy magic helped unearth the seeds. We’d just finished reading ‘Charlotte the Sunflower Fairy’ by Daisy Meadows. This is the fourth book of seven in ‘The Petal Fairies‘ collection. Each book has a hidden letter in a petal and when we’ve got all the letters they will spell a word. Well, to cut a long story short, Charli asked me to put the four letters we already have somewhere safe and the place I chose ended up being right next to our sunflower seeds!