A last garden.

Last Friday, everyone else went to Fyvie Castle while Amelia and I went into Aberdeen. The walled garden there was so lovely that the historian wanted me to see it. So today, when the beautiful sunny weather of yesterday had turned again to rain, we went to see it.

still green raspberries

purple cornflowers

'I have to say, I think this is a truly Scottish thing, to be visiting a garden in the rain,' said my daughter. It is a beautiful garden, entirely worth several visits. We opened the umbrellas and took it in.

inside the walled garden

 

still red blackberries

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scottish apples (James Grieve)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

true Scotland.

 

a lettuce so perfect it is a flower.

It was the children's first day back at school. We walked with them in the morning and met them in the afternoon.

chatting after school.

 

pretty excited to get there.

Then, it was the back to school feast, finishing reading ambitious novel to Miriam and Evie, watching our last few episodes of Still Game, and packing. Sleeping/not sleeping. And goodbyes.

 

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Dreich.

Yesterday, my daughter and I spent most of the day in Aberdeen having lunch and shopping. Today, we made waffles and little books, then went out, all of us. Both days, it was rainy, the kind of rain that comes down steadily, without a lot of fanfare but with not much relief in sight, and today it was even more like that than yesterday. If you look on the iPhone weather app for this town, you can see the animation for rain, drops coming down in perpendicular lines. It looked like that when you looked out the window, too.

It took us a little while to get out of the house, and by the time we arrived at the Winter Gardens in Duthie Park, it was fairly dismal. We were all just a little out of sorts. 'They've put in a lot of new, nice play equipment. But it's not much of a day for that, I'm afraid,' my daughter said. We walked at a good clip from the car park to the gardens. It was wet and we were a little quarrelsome.

rain on the glass

But once we were inside, the rain didn't much matter. We could see it--hear it, faintly--sheeting on the conservatory walls and roof, but the green world inside did its conjuring.

venus flytraps (don't touch!)

 

fuschia, in the Victorian Corridor

 

brilliant I'm not sure what.

 

the desert. In Scotland.

 

morning glory.

 

in the tropics.

residents of the Winter Gardens.

 

My particular favorite beauties of the day.

Evie.

 

Miriam.

 

Eli.

By the end of the day, it seemed like the gardens, plus a game of bowling, some fish and chips for the kids and some Thai food for the adults, restored us. And the rain stopped.

 

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The rain.

I was just wondering about the monsoon season in northern Utah, and here it is, arriving with a bang.

The only downside is that Bruiser finds the thunder disquieting. Trembling, general fearfulness--this from a dog whose motto used to be 'WHO DAT.' It is heartrending.

So we calmed ourselves down with a little Jedi selfie action.

patience you must have, my young padawan.

do or do not, there is no try.

Rainy day letter.

Dear rainy day,

The other morning--Tuesday--when I woke up and you, rainy day, were happening, I was taken aback. I had a plan for what I would wear that was now rendered, entirely, moot. And the new plan wasn't all that helpful--while I had a raincoat, I did not have a hat nor an umbrella. In fact, out of all the clothes and accessories and accoutrements I have for weather, I have never really accounted for the way that rain gets one's head wet. Which meant, rainy day, that I walked to class carrying books and sheafs of poems, not to mention my regular purse and so forth, getting soaked and more soaked. Plus, that morning I treated my alarm like it was just a suggestion, so I was late. Late, panicky, and soaked.

Let me pause to ask: where is my umbrella? My hypothetical umbrella, which I contemplate purchasing every year. There are endless stylish umbrelli, umbrelli aplenty. You'd think I'd have bought one about ten times--but no, I have no umbrella, and thus I find myself periodically in a soaked frame of mind, questioning my judgement and also the weather.

But truthfully, the weather-questioning happens only briefly. I love rainy weather. In fact, rainy is the weather I carry around inside.

Periodically, one of the women in my writing group gets after me a little because--and this is absolutely true--much of what I write is melancholy, too melancholy from her point of view, like a moody teenager's work, except about grown-up subjects, and maybe the subjects are a moody teenager's too. I can't disagree with her. Sometimes I point this out to myself. But to rain and to melancholy I always find myself returning.

I had a big break in my work day today, and because the past few weeks have been full of long, long work days, I decided to leave campus for an hour or so. As I drove, the sky pillowy and pearly, I thought how lovely, how perfect, really. It's mid-April, the weather is cool, the weather is wet. The weather is not sunny, at least not commitedly so. It is the weather I want to be out in, or looking out upon. It is my best weather, and maybe that's why I do such a lame job of sheltering myself from it.

Rainy day, I am looking forward to a great, extended swath of you, with or without a hat.

Please don't let me down,

htms

couplet

Unbelievable.

The sky was brilliant tonight when we went out for a quick spin, between the rains.

It actually looked more like this (the above is a composite I tried in Picasa):

New forms of summer entertainment.

Remember these?

The last couple of nights there have been awesome wind and rain storms out here, and the historian and I have taken to sitting on the patio--in the above-mentioned chairs, but under cover--to watch: