Drippy Night-time Gardens

Is all that rain even possible? Might this be a mighty disturbance in the atmosphere that brings us torrential rain day after impossible day, that exists only in our minds; merely a figment of our fevered collective imagination? There is no surcease.

But then, what does it really matter? I mean aside from those thousand or so homeowners in the western reaches of the city who have suffered flooding in their basements and have been forced to discard furniture, memorabilia, electronics. And whose lack of insurance coverage surely does represent a personal tragedy.

For the rest of us, minor inconvenience from time to time. But all is not lost. There are still glorious summer moments. Not quite just moments, whole stretches of time - say an hour or several hours during the day. The soil doesn't quite have an opportunity to dry before the next onslaught, but there is a general atmosphere of release from indoor captivity and a powerful inducement with the temporary relaxation of the rain to get out there while we may.

To get out into the ravine for a walk, and do some fairly fancy footwork attempting to bypass the huge swells of muck that have captured the trails. Avoiding at the very least the worst of the passages. When we returned from our ravine walk yesterday in between downpours, little Riley's legs resembled svelte, dark boots and it was a challenge to probe tenderly between his pads to remove all the tiny pebbles and the mud that he'd had to plunge through. Button's legs are already black - her natural colouration - but when she too was immersed in the laundry room sink for a wash-down, the water soon turned murky and strewn with particulate matter.

With everything so utterly drenched, colours, however, are beautifully intensified, and it's sheer pleasure to wander through the gardens, plucking the occasional weed, dead-heading spent flower heads, snipping here and there, even transferring annuals that have begun to suffocate under the pushy foliage of perennials spreading out eagerly to claim more room than what was originally allotted to them.

And then, at night, to go out on the prowl, stealthily, with the camera, and to capture images of the sleeping gardens.