Pique (a) Boo!

We're drenched, utterly rained-out to proportions not hitherto experienced during a lost summer. We awoke this morning to the distant sounds of thunder. Delicious as those sounds normally are, they elicited in us an "uh, oh!", anticipating yet again a day of incessant downpours. Following hard on the storms of previous days, weeks and, let's see ... months. This has been an inordinately, extraordinarily wet summer. With few signs of abatement.

It took some time, but the system approached, gradually and purposefully. And when it reached our very direct vicinity it unleashed its pent-up energies both in sound and impact. The rain pelted our landscape unceasingly, pounding its presence on rooftops, roadways, gardens and all else that presumed to present as innocent to its intent. Lashing windows and passing vehicles and incautious cyclists alike with its persistent deluge.

Post deluge, sun. Who could complain other than those with flooded basements or farmed crops with fields and patience already inundated and frayed beyond endurance? Flooded basements and deferred vacation plans are one thing; area crops disastrously impacted, not to be brought to market, another thing entirely.

Unlike the morning's thunderstorm with its prolonged, noisy approach and portentous promise, what took its place throughout the balance of the day was stealthy pop-up downbursts that arrive unheralded at half-hour intervals. The questing camera picks up the measure of the sky's portent as clouds quietly and darkly thrust by the wind rush their way across the landscape of the sky.

The aconite in our gardens so lately come to stately presence and bright monks-hood bloom is hard put to resist following the earlier collapse of the rain-sodden and wind-whipped delphiniums in tragic broken foliage. The bright-headed poppies and the vibrant, sunny tickseed succumb too, to the weight of the rain and the insistent wind; the gardens brought low by pressures they are incapable of resisting.

A half-hour elapses, and another ferocious downpour. And. then. the sun. And then the clouds shuffle back with dark and rainy intent and we rush again for cover from the downpour. And.we.wait.for.it. Another sunny interval, sun full out and doing its very best to dry everything, mist rising slowly from the steaming walkway. We know this will not last, the choreograph of mistaken identity this summer eager to return to the stage.

And yes, another unleashing of the sky's rage at the impetuous sun. And then, predictably perhaps, the sun became aggrieved and slunk off behind the clouds in an affronted huff. And the rain called a brief, placatory time out. Impasse.