One of those mornings when you feel completely justified in late lazing about in bed, since there it's snug and warm and comfortable and outside it's dark, cold and sodden, rain urgently knocking at the bedroom windows, wanting to get in beside you in the bed, while you'd far prefer it to be just you two. So you take your time and later rather than sooner get up to meet the new day.

It's an unmistakable clone of the previous days; so overcast you can be forgiven in assuming that some force beyond reckoning has abducted the sky and left in its wake an immense, inverted fish tank from which the well-bred fish have long since escaped, leaving us down below with the gushing water they've evacuated, but not before it's been heavily contaminated by their waste.

But you do drag yourself out of bed because it's long past time. And poor little Riley has to get out from under the covers because it's time that he too arises from his deep night-long sleep. But he's kind of miserable with the cold, and his forlorn face recommends to us that it might be a good idea to put on the gas fireplace where he can relax, absorbing the warmth from it. A warmth that will eventually pervade the entire space, meaning we'd all benefit from it. And here we thought we'd long dispensed with the need for its cheery comfort.

As we have our breakfast we reflect on how completely and remorselessly nature has done one of her famous turnabouts, obviously missing her old companion winter. To award us protesting humans with a month of heavy rains -- all right, not a month, but surely almost a full week where thunderstorms with their delightful sound-and-light shows have been entertaining us and drowning our hopes for a day spent out-of-doors sans rainjackets.

I've really no reason to complain, after all. Id did get all the planting done. The gardens and the garden pots are flourishing. They love the rain. It enables them to establish their root systems. This is a critical time for them to establish themselves, and encouraging to the perennials as well. As for us, it relieves us of the obligation to be vigilant and having to water them continually. The brief periods where the rain relents and the sun emits its warming, life-enhancing rays helps them to dry out briefly before the next wet onslaught; just perfect late-spring growing conditions.

The woods beyond our house, where we peregrinate daily are sodden, the trails have turned back into mush with little ponds here and there newly developed that will most certainly become hosts for mosquito larvae to mature and attempt their feeding forays on both the wildlife and us, but this is nature's usual cycle, and we embrace it all.

Bring it on, bring it all on, it's good to be alive.