ALL THE LEAVES ARE BROWN, AND THE SKY IS GRAY...

...but I'm content to be right where I am, not dreaming of being on the Coast. Here are two recent views from my backyard. The top photo is to the west, with the faint arm of Pigeon Bay hugging the horizon. The second shot is to the east, with the Point Pelee peninsula. Today it's raining, and fortunately the wind isn't too strong, so the back porch windows just may get cleaned and stay that way! It's a beautiful mild day in a rather indeterminate month...

BEFORE THE STORM

Beside the lake, days that bring summer rain also bring the swallows. One overcast day, as I drove over the bridge at the small local marina, and headed for home along the shore road, I could see the sky between the trees was filled with swallows, diving and looping in the nothingness of the air. Every time I see these birds flying before a storm, I'm reminded of what my ex once told me, that when he was a boy in Saskatchewan in the 1940s, the old-timers on the rez used to say these swallows the real thunderbirds. They told him that many people pictured the eagle as the thunderbird, because the eagle was so large and fierce looking, but that it was really the tiny swallows who bore that name.

The rain poured down suddenly and sent every living thing hurrying for shelter. Then later, as the storm tapered off, the birds returned to dance again in the newly-washed sky, and I dashed out between the drops and a snapped a few pictures of the birds as best I could.

IT’S REALLY “BLANKING” RAINING TODAY

Some of you regular readers may recall that I like to make up my own words for things. Sometimes I make up new definitions for old words, like Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass:

“There's glory for you!”
“I don't know what you mean by ‘glory.’ ” Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant ‘there's a nice knock-down argument for you!’ ”
“But ‘glory’ doesn't mean ‘a nice knock-down argument,’ ” Alice objected.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master -- that's all.”

Sometimes, I make up words for things that I wish to write about, but there simply aren’t any existing words for them. Coincidentally, most of the words I invent, either brand-new ones or those to replace existing ones that I don’t especially like, have to do with weather. Maybe it’s because I write a lot of poetry, but I find that the English language is really under understaffed when it comes to words for weather in general, and poetic words for weather in particular. We’ve all heard that northern aboriginal peoples have many words for snow, doubtless because of where they live, there's a necessity of knowing the precise conditions they’re venturing into at any given time.

One weather event that does seem to have good roster of terms is ‘rain,’ but though English gets points for having good variety, almost nobody agrees on what name goes with what level of precipitation, so we are all kind of left to our own Humpty Dumpty devices on a rainy day. Here, in no particular order of wetness, are some of the choices:

misting (or wee mist), drizzling, spitting, pouring, sprinkling
light rain, mizzle (mist + drizzle?), downpour, sheets, buckets, cats and dogs…

Finally, here is a word I made up replace the pre-existing weather term virga, which is rain you see in the distance that appears to sweep down like fringe, but doesn’t actually make it to the ground. Fringe of rain = frainge. Now, I realize that there is nothing wrong with virga, per se. In fact, it's a fairly common surname. But still, for fringes of rain in the sky, I thought we could do better. Feel free to use it to impress your friends…

You: “Oh look at that beeeyootiful frainge over the mountains!” (or wherever you happen to see it).
Friend: “Frainge? What’s that? Where?”
You: (feeling a bit chuffed) “You’ve never heard of frainge? Let me explain…”

Now, I just need to figure out what it's doing outside at the moment.


Virga photo from Wikimedia Commons

INFINITE WORLDS

It's been raining off and on all morning. I had some errands to run, so I pocketed my camera and headed out in the van, accompanied by one of my favorite rainy day CDs - "Glacier Journey" by Christine (Quiet Paths) and Matthew. It's beautiful music to play in any weather, but on misty days with fog enveloping your senses, it's the perfect finishing touch. The road into town passes by canals and a small private marina, some drainage ditches, all full-to-bursting after a few heavy rains and the melting snow.


I stopped several places along the way just to watch the drops splash down, the circles spread, and the reflections of trees dance in a harmless wind. All the bushes were hung with fat raindrops that shone, despite the dull light, like tiny universes all their own. When I arrived back home, I noticed the one remaining drift in my yard - the one that was so huge when it was new that you could have hidden a mid-sized car under it with room to spare - had shrunk to reveal part of a tunnel, a runway, used by some mouse or vole to travel in relative warmth and safety while during the coldest days.

We had a hearty snow storm last April, so perhaps all of us will need to make our way through yet more drifts before summer comes to stay, but today, this was a day of peering into infinite worlds not seen when the road is dry, the canals are low, and the voles go about their business in tunnels underground.