On Monday the oddest day of continual heavy rain events occurred. One thunder storm rumbled through the area, with lightning and thunder so close it sounded and looked at times as though both were attempting entry to our inner sanctum. We don't find these events the least bit intimidating; we do, after all, have the protection of the house around us.  The storms, at their fiercest levels inspire awe and excitement in us, we love to watch each storm unfold and then observe its raging onslaught. From the shelter of the house, of course.

Although on occasion we've been somewhat outside, witnessing the storm unfold from heavily bruised skies overhead parking directly above, thunder emanating, and then lightning striking and soon enough those huge gobs of sky-spittle consuming the atmosphere. When I say 'outside', I mean from within the shelter of the garage, with doors wide open and as close to the threshold as we can manoeuvre without threat of becoming completely soaked.

After the first onslaught, but before the rain had completely spent itself, hail began hurtling down, smacking windows, the roof, the gardens, and the deck, collecting in small white marbled piles, until finally all came to a sudden halt. And then, voila! out came the sun, in a widening patch of ocean-blue sky. And we thought the rain was over for the day.

And how wrong we were. A succession of similar events, sans accompanying hail occurred, with half-hour breaks between where the sun would evince itself briefly then once again the sky was overtaken with a burden of dark, threatening clouds and once again thunder repeatedly rumbled and lightning speared the atmosphere.

During one of those brief intervals, and while the rain was actually coming down at a still-respectable pace even while the sun was fully shining, we set out in our rainjackets for a quick ravine ramble. The trails had been scoured, the creek was a made over into a muddy slough dashing madly on its course, and nowhere was there a bird to be heard, nor any sign of wildlife.

We hoped we'd be able to make a shorter-than-usual traverse without being caught in another downpour. Through the canopy of steadily dripping trees we could still see blue skies and clouds that weren't charcoal but merely light grey tinged with white - or was it the other way around? No matter, we heard thunder despite the light-show of that burning disk. Still, we were fortunate enough to complete our little ramble before the skies opened up once again; which is to say closed completely over with the weight of dark clouds which themselves clashed to produce the sound-and-light show that resulted in yet another downpour.

An even later thunderclash resulted in a black funnel cloud close to where we live. It hit a golf course, and uprooted three century-old Maple trees.