I love a rainy night

“I love to hear the thunder; watch the lightning when it lights up the sky.” Eddie Rabbit sang it true.

This week I determined to be a time of easing back into my “normal” routine. Ha! Not even the weather in this, the dry season, has cooperated. It seldom rains in March. Yet, here it is, rain in bucketsful.

“It’s such a beautiful sight. I love to feel the rain on my face; taste the rain on my lips. In the moonlight shadows, showers wash all my cares away.”

Routine has slipped my grip. While I’ve managed to spend several open-the-morning hours in my garden, weeding and pruning, from there my schedule gets ragged.

One day Nancie came over while I was dragging out the ironing board and asked if I wanted to go to the vivero. The vivero, the garden center, supplies my drug of choice. “Need you ask?” David and his wife always make me feel welcome.

In twenty minutes I chose three small-leaf basil, the kind that grows tree-like, three climbers for my south wall, and fifteen ground covers with flowers of red, blue, white and purple. Ah, nirvana for approximately $15 USD. Manana for the ironing.

Last week the season turned from winter-as-we-know-it into spring. Birds of every hue and cry flit through my trees. Jacaranda trees wear an umbrella canopy of purple. Hummingbirds fight for territory in my ever-blooming red bottle-brush. Some species set up housekeeping. Some pause for sustenance on their way further north. Great flocks of yellow-breasted blackbirds whoosh and rustle like a storm-cloud; flying your direction.

My amaryllis sings spring in full chorus. Yes, this is the flower we Montanans patiently nurture into bloom in its tiny dish-garden on the dining table, hoping for Christmas color. Then they go wherever good plants go, never to be seen again.

Mine grow outside (I know you don’t want to hear this) in my border garden, plunked helter-skelter. The only care they get is admiration. Today fifty stalks (out of four hundred bulbs) stand tall, flowers like trumpets. I prune the stalk low when it has finished its song and, crazily, another shoot springs upward. If last summer is indicative, I can expect amaryllis flowers for four months. Next year there will be twice as many.

See how easily distracted I am? Routine? Today I intended baking bread. While mopping my bodega, I ripped a gash along my finger; raked it along a protruding nail. I don’t fancy blood in my bread, so that chore is put off.

Nancie leaves for her northern home this week. So we squeeze in drives to our favorite restaurants where we dawdle for hours over good food. A trip to the hot springs at Amatlan de Canas, over the hills into Nayarit. Of simply lounge on our patios, talking.

I try for routine. Qi Gong is back in my life. I’ll miss Nancie but still have three other friends with whom to jump start the mornings.

After a holiday from my Espanol lessons, I feel good reinstituting study. I got downright excited when I understood the recorded Mexican voice on the phone yesterday, telling me the number I dialed (Dialed?) did not exist. Kathy had given me half her daughter’s cell number and half landline. Although it seems like my understanding is slower coming than the ice age, I’m learning.

Maybe this week I’ll be able to get back into my rhythm, my comfortable routine. Housework, gardening, reading, that dratted pile of ironing, or simply sitting in the sun. Ah, yes, the sun.

“I wake up to a sunny day, puts a song in this heart of mine, puts a smile on my face every time.” This morning I woke to a glory sky shouting hallelujah; oranges of every shade backlighting wispy mares’ tails.

This afternoon another surprise rain pelts my metal-roofed patio. I love rain, day or night. My garden loves it. We sing the same song.

——

Sondra Ashton grew up in Harlem but spent most of her adult life out of state. She returned to see the Hi-Line with a perspective of delight. After several years back in Harlem, Ashton is seeking new experiences in Etzatlan, Mexico.