"At sundown on Tuesday the water tightened and hurt, like a shroud over the heart. The coolness of the first morning began to change into a hot and sticky humidity. The temperature was neither cold nor hot; it was the temperature of a fever chill. Feet sweated inside shoes. It was hard to say what was more disagreeable, bare skin or the contact of clothing on skin. All activity had ceased in the house. We sat on the veranda but we no longer watched the rain as we did on the first day. We no longer felt it falling. We no longer saw anything except the outline of the trees in the mist, with a sad and desolate sunset which left on your lips the same taste with which you awaken after having dreamed about a stranger."
Excerpt from "Monologue of Isabel Watching It Rain in Macondo," in Leaf Storm and Other Stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
After weeks and weeks of rain, I was beginning to feel as if I were living in Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez's mythical village of Macondo. The rain that I had initially welcomed turned our yard into a bog. It seeped into the basement. It permeated the folds of bed sheets, bath towels, and burlap bags. The saturated air inside our house breathed out a vapor of must and mildew.
Perhaps I exaggerate.
We dodged the daily rainstorms and thundershowers and managed to find patches of sun, especially in the mornings. The rain transformed waterfalls into gleeful cascades. It turned already lush vegetation into a summer rain forest. Evenings brought their own silent fireworks, when the lightning bugs--more plentiful perhaps because of the dampness--emerged and lit their echoing sparks.
The constant rain produced a bumper crop of smooth cherries, their hides having stretched gradually as they ripened into lushness without bursting.
Having done their work on the cherry blossoms months ago, the bees have moved on to other nectars.
The displays of fire in the sky on the Fourth of July seem to have brought back the sun, at least for a time. I'm off to explore while I can.
2 comments:
Your pictures!! Fabulous and that last one with the bee - LOVE IT! I had heard the weather has been pretty boggy in your neck of the woods. And you have made the best of it, from the sound of things. Although musty and moldy bath towels and bed sheets do not sound very nice.
And cherries, I could write love poems to sweet cherries!
the sun is out for a visit today but I hear those rain clouds are moving in again:(
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