There are blah days and you live with them. In fact they're not so bad after all. Blah that we can't get out with Jackie and Jillie to the ravine today. But it's an extra hour-and-a-half we can use for other purposes. A rare event, missing one afternoon's ramble through the forest trails. The forest floor was looking pretty taxed for lack of irrigation, big cracks appearing as testament that clay doesn't much appreciate conditions resembling a desert.

Last night it began, the changeover from hot sunny and humid days, to cooler, sunless days when a violent thunderstorm ripped through the atmosphere dousing the environment generously with big, thick drops of voluminous rain. At some point during the night there was another thunderstorm, its loud bangs and lightning cracks briefly lighting up the bedroom. Jackie and Jillie popped up on cue and began barking with each of those strikes. 

They're not frightened, just affronted at the rude awakening and they soon drifted back off to sleep. As for us, we both enjoy the sounds of a thunderstorm, the heavens clashing in an argument between two conflicted giants striding through the night bad-tempered and cursing. The electric flashes of light the daggers they throw at one another through their flashing eyeballs. And the resulting rain the tears their children shed in fear that one or the other will make orphans of them.

This morning the garden was well drenched, soggy with an abundance of clear, cool water courtesy of two argumentative giants above who when all was said and done, apologized to one another and went out of their way to reassure their offspring, promising better behaviour for the future. They may have meant well, but their argument re-heated by afternoon.

A day of heavily overcast skies was transformed when another bitter argument ensued and this time a series of rolling thunderstorms came sweeping through the landscape, the wind picked up, the war drums beat frantically, the tuba up in that celestial orchestra dramatizing that disagreement orchestrated for the amused attention of the other heavenly bodies went into convulsive heaves of temperament until finally, the combatants settled back down to neighbourly civility and the rain ceased, leaving behind a contented landscape, very nicely watered.

All the vegetation down here is ecstatic, pleased beyond description at the generosity of the storms that seem to threaten but benevolently leave those gifts so necessary to the welfare of all growing matter. And finally Jackie and Jillie settled down, not quite exhausted from their incessant barking, but content to let the matter exhaust itself without their intervention.