It is summer, and no doubt about it, the living is easier.  More relaxed, spontaneous, comfortable and beautiful to look upon, our outdoor landscapes.  We are not forced by the extremes of cold weather to cope constantly going about our business.

Now, when we embark on our daily perambulations in the ravine where we are so close to nature, we keep reminding one another how fortunate we are, how pleasurable our pursuits, and how lovely the weather is, as it so often is.  When it is unbearably hot, there is cool shade aplenty in the ravine under the canopy of the forest, and gentle breezes waft cooler air up from the stream that runs through the ravine.

Without weather to incessantly comment upon, one sometimes wonders what folk living in the Ottawa Valley of Eastern Ontario would have to talk about.  And talk has, as in years past, focused on summertime weather extremes.  This year has given us a straight run of searingly hot days.  Along with drought conditions, with far fewer rain events than is normal for this time of year, following hard on a moisture-lacking winter. 

A poor combination for the growing of agricultural crops.  And local farms are suffering.  Rain is badly needed.  And yesterday, Environment Canada issued alerts for the high likelihood of violent thunderstorms, and some localized mini-tornadoes as well.  Around three o'clock yesterday afternoon the first of the thunderstorms rumbled in, blasting the landscape with torrents of rain under thick, black clouds and stabbing daggers of lightning.  We could hear hail pinging the windows.  We watched as trees bent low and were flung back up again under the influence of 'gale-force' winds.

In rural areas farmers got somewhat copious amounts of rain, more than they might have wished for at one fell swoop.  Trees were uprooted and power lines came down.  Rural dwellers, and urban dwellers alike found themselves without electrical power.  Not so bad for the urbanites, more of a problem for the rural folk whose wells run on electricity. 

The wished-for rain did eventuate, but so did the loss of their power source and the ability to mechanically draw water from their wells.  Life can be so complicated.  Nature is so immensely unexpectedly complex.  And through the night, more thunderstorms wracked the environment with their sturm und drang.