Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby. ~ Langston Hughes

We had a very abbreviated Autumn here in southern Michigan this year.  Summer was very reluctant to give up its grip on the weather and we've enjoyed a very extended spree of warm temperatures and brilliant blue skies, even into the 80's.  That is, until yesterday when the wind patterns changed and began bringing us some much-needed rain.  This photo here is one I took as I was out walking with my husband on Sunday.  I'd been taking photos the past several days on my solo walks but up until Sunday there wasn't much in the way of color.  But as we set out early Sunday it was like the trees and wooded areas came ablaze overnight and I got some very nice Fall scenes.  Yesterday it rained and the wind blew and we had showers of wet leaves floating down, and now a lot of the color is gone with more wind and rain on the way today.  Our Autumn pretty much came and went on Sunday, ha!  And so late in the year!  It's almost Halloween!  My husband was telling me Winter's coming on fast now.  His phone's extended forecast is already looking for snow in the next week or so.  Actually, I think our region really lucked out when the weather-hand was dealt this year.  It's been dry, and it's been warm, but we haven't had the fires the West has suffered through, or the terrible devastation of the Gulf hurricanes.  The weather is crazy.  The world is crazy.  Oy.

I spent the first 12 years of my life living in a small town in Washington State that bordered on the southern edge of the Olympic Rain Forest.  I am not exaggerating when I say it rained about 300 days a year there.  If it wasn't raining it was 'misting'.  My mom, who had a tendency toward a lot of depression, hated living there after having grown up in New England where the four seasons happened every year.  Not rain, rain, rain, and more rain for each season.  But for my brothers and me, we knew nothing else; kids are so adaptable.  Back in the late 1950's and early 1960's people didn't take to the road and travel like they do nowadays, so I think I took it for granted the rest of the world had the same weather we had.  My world consisted of visiting family friends in Astoria, Oregon, around 60 miles south of us, a time or two each year...whose weather was just as nasty, situated where the Pacific Ocean and the mouth of the Columbia River meet...and going 35 miles east to Olympia a few times where it was usually rainy or cloudy, too.  There weren't freeways...not even 4-lane highways...so traveling was slower.  Life was slower.  Or so it seemed.  Yet every generation has its own stresses and worries, doesn't it?  No one is exempt from it. But hindsight truly is better and more forgiving than foresight.  Yet, with the endless rain, we 'made do' with whatever the skies decided to give us every day.  We played outside.  We'd sail toy boats down the flooded gutters.  We'd take salt and kill the huge slugs that would come out after the rain.  We'd read.  We'd play endless games of Life.  We 'made do'.

It is what it is, the weather.  Hope and grumbling and grousing and complaining won't change it.  Now, living in a region where the weather changes significantly with each season, I can easily and honestly say I don't miss the rain of the Northwest, where I lived for 57 years.  But there are still days, especially if it's been several weeks between rain showers here in the summer, and the rain begins to fall and freshen up the air and earth.  Especially at night with the windows open.  The rain really is a lullaby and it's music soothes me to sleep.