from Susan/Sarah...
Well, I was going to blog a bit about the garden and the yard, since it’s the time of year when everything is looking pretty good. Even mine, and I don’t go overboard with the gardening thing, since allergies have something to say about that. Ahem.
Here’s some of the flowers in containers on my deck, last week. 
And then it started to rain.
And rain. And rain.
We’re in Maryland, in an area where it hardly ever floods. Until this week. The rains came from nowhere...well, I’m sure they came from somewhere but I wasn’t paying any attention, having lots of work to do, so I was busy tap-tapping away on my keyboard, when I looked up...and noticed it was raining pretty hard. Sheets of it. Later, when lightning cracked and thunder started boom-shaka-lakking, I leaped out of my chair and ran downstairs. The dog scurried under the nearest sofa, and I stood at the door watching the deluge in the street and the yard, and while lightning flashed and thunder rolled like bowling balls, I thought about where the husband and sons were in relation to cars, roads, and various routes home. And I resisted the urge to regress, er, resort, to a time-tested technique that worked for me when I was a kid in Upstate New York: I would put on rubber-soled sneakers and wind as many rubber bands in my hair as possible (great look), then settle down on the window seat to watch the storm. Taking out all those rubber bands later was a pain, especially extracting them from curly hair, but it was worth it: I was safe, so the method clearly worked.
This week it wasn’t just one storm that sent me bolting from my chair, it was one storm after another for four days or so, big, lusty, crashing, violent deluge storms, day and night, several inches of rain a day. Locally and throughout the area, there was flooding, and several routes closed down. We’re just outside of D.C., which was a mess. A friend’s son parked his new car outside a museum, and came out a few hours later to find it sloshing up to its side mirrors in water. Many people had losses and were evacuated, and for many this has been a very, very serious situation. I appreciate that, and I feel for them. There’s a helpless feeling when Nature takes over, yanks life out of your control, and all you can do is sit and watch.
We are fortunate to be perched on the highest point in our county. Roads were closed, but we were okay, and the basement stayed dry. We watched our yard turn into a water theme park, complete with mud slide, waterfall, wave pool, a lake, a crescent-shaped river, and a log flume (for squirrels). I think we had a tunnel of love flowing for the rabbits under the deck.
The dog, a fearless little Westie who cowers at nothing (except the vacuum cleaner, but anything that devours and growls like that is worth avoiding), kept running out on the deck to bark at the thunder. But being low to the ground, she won’t go out willingly in wet grass. This creates logistical problems....so more than once I tugged her outside on a leash in drenching rain.
When I wasn’t watching the back hill dissolve into rivulets and craters, or dragging the dog outside in the downpour, or worrying about the teenage son with the car, a job to go to, friends to visit, and a sense of immortality undaunted by oh, a little rain, I did get some work done.
I know it was a terrible series of storms for many, and our problems were few in the scope of things around here. We lost electricity and internet more than once, but I had no problem getting to work (just down the hall, turn right), and I enjoyed the steady thrumming of rain on the roof. There’s something very peaceful about sitting down with notebook and pens (had to turn that computer off!) to do some writing, and it’s equally nice to sit down with a wonderful story and do some reading. I often listen to music when I read or write, but not this week. Rain is its own music.
I was reminded how good it is to do without the rush-rush of an electronic lifestyle, to go without electricity, internet, easily accessed computer files, and just to sit quietly and listen to my own thoughts, without the extra buzziness that we so often allow into our days. So for me, those storms were a little gift of simplicity in very wet packaging. I welcome storms, and snowstorms too, for that quietude. But I always put on my Keds just in case.
~Susan
p.s. it's sunny today! (with thunderstorms called for this afternoon....)
A lake forming in our back yard. 
Not a Highland waterfall: the back hill 