The garden’s blessing from the sky
By Christine Kindle
[Reprinted from Green Prints “The Weeder’s Digest,” the only literary gardening quarterly. $15.57/4 issues. POB 1355 Fairview, NC 28730.]
Raindrops are leaving their footprints on the sidewalk, and I’m standing barefoot in the garden, soaking up a summer shower.
I knew it was coming. All the signs were there. A breeze picked up the scent of grass and the silver maple turned its leaves upside down. (The old rhyme is never wrong: “When leaves show their undersides, be very sure that rain betides.”)
The birds felt it, too. Swallows quit the clouds and swooped low over the lawn, scooping up insects close to the grass. A robin chirped from her nest while a flock of finches settled, chattering like schoolgirls, in the hemlock. Mourning doves called as the barometer fell-and then so did the rain.
The first drops landed soft as a whisper in a lover’s ear, barely speckling the ground. The birds went quiet. Pansies turned their faces to the sky. Tomato leaves exhaled their musky scent, and the rose released its perfume to the breeze.
Then the clouds thickened, drops fattened, and soon the shower found its rhythm, tapping at the kitchen window and calling me outdoors.
A summer storm will get the garden growing. Seedlings poke tlleir heads up to see what’s going on. Pea vines stretch their tendrils, as if moist air were easier to grasp, and haul themselves up higher on the trellis. Underground, thirsty roots drink in the water seeping between parched crumbs of .soil.
Some plants, it seems, are made for rainy days. Water collects on the sedum’s fleshy leaves, filling each rubbery cup with a puddle of quicksilver. When a leaf can hold no more, it sags a little, setting off a waterfall that spills from leaf to leaf until the lowest drains into the mulch. Meanwhile, of course, the top most tier of leaves is filling up again, and sagging, and spilling, until the sedum streams like a fountain turned on full.
Under the maple tree, lady’s mantle gathers raindrops on her furry foliage, each one separate and glistening like a rhine stone. Rhubarb, a practical sort, catches water in leaves nearly big as umbrellas and funnels the stream toward its roots. The heart-shaped blooms of bleeding heart drip slowly, dramatically, one drop at a time.
Not every flower can stand up to a storm. A steady rain pounds petunias to a pulp, knocks the petals off the wide open roses. Peony flowers crumple like wads of damp tissues. But daylilies close up their blooms and stretch toward the clouds, while Moonbeam coreopsis fluffs
out its thread-fine leaves and shatters raindrops into glitter.
Silver plants go green on rainy days; felted leaves mat like wet velvet. Painted daisies turn themselves inside out, their petals slicked back by the storm. Soaked to the skin, I watch a bumblebee hide in the bell of a foxglove, only to pull it loose with his clumsy weight. I can almost hear him grumble as he backs out of the fallen blossom, smooths his fuzzy waistcoat, and barrels off to find a sturdier shelter.
Honeybees stay in their hives when it rains, whining about the weather. At storm’s end they’ll find only thin nectar and damp pollen too heavy to haul. Open a hive on a sunny day and the bees go about their business without noticing. After a spell of damp weather, though, they’ll sting out of pure bad temper.
Hummingbirds, too, find their drinks watered down after blossoms are rinsed in the rain. Feeders ignored when flowers are dry will tempt them after a shower.
The sky is full of shadows and the neighbor’s cat hides on the porch, drying her face with her paws. Worms wiggle up through the lawn as their burrows fill with rain. This is the hour of the newt, who slips out from under the compost heap to sop up the moisture he craves.
I watch for the toad who lives under the downspout, his tunnel roofed by an old slate shingle that channels the water away. If the garden is quiet, he’ll sit with his face up turned, eyes closed in amphibian ecstasy as raindrops roll over his cheeks.
It’s time to search for pollywogs in puddles, to pull back the grass and pick crickets out of their hiding places. Slugs and snails will feast tonight. And in the morning, we’ll find ‘fairy rings’ of mushrooms under the trees.
Even the stones are changed by the storm, showing colors the sun bleaches pale. Clay flowerpots lose their chalky veneer; soil changes from mocha to chocolate. The shower draws circles in the birdbath, filling it to the brim, and sends a scrap of paper sailing down the street like a boat on its way to the sea.
Pale sun peeks through a crack in the clouds, then hides its face again. There are windows to close and dinner to cook, but cloudbursts don’t last long enough. While runoff rattles down the drainpipe and splatters the sidewalk, I–without sense enough to come in out of the rain–splash through just one more puddle.
