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(no subject)
I'm sure I used to remember rain showers.
Hard, heavy, three day rains; puddles collecting in the yard until we had to run out in the downpour to trench the them through the gravel and grass so we'd be able to get in and out to the line road. Water running down the window panes, loud enough in the gutters and downspouts you could hear it even above the droplets drumming out a steady beat on the shingles. (Moneymoneymoneymoney)
Droplets trickling down my face, catching in my lashes and cool at the nap of my neck. The scent of crushed morning glories and caragana blossoms. I'm sure I remember what it felt like to stand in the trees and let the last of the rain shake down to my tongue as the sun started to peek between the branches, bark dyed black with water.
Clean-washed gravel, bright beneath thinning clouds. We'd go rock hunting and return with our pockets stuffed, sneakers squelching and pants soaked from the hem up as dew was drawn up the fabric. By the time our treasures were dry, they'd have lost their luster: Quartz clouded, shining veins of silver and gold hidden in plain grey stone, dragon hearts fading into misshapen lumps of rock the colour of dried blood.
I still have some of them, in a small jewelery box. They're on top of my dresser, between the jungle of flowers I've been given and have dried, and the bottle of strawberry wine I was given for grad by a friend.
I remember, I'm sure, thunderstorms. Great grey clouds, low and pregnant over the Saskatchewan horizon. Sitting in the living room and watching eagerly out the glass doors for the first flash of lightning. Waiting to count the seconds between the broken shards of light and the grumbling retorts of thunder, calculating the distance to the heart of the storm.
I'm sure I remember, only perhaps these are the stories I tell myself.
I don't remember the last time I saw a crocus.
We're pushing four years drought. It's been five since we had a decent snow -- these days, the drifts struggle cover the seats of picnic tables. I remember when we'd have to dig to find the tops, when falling through and getting stuck was a serious concern. My uncle remembers when the drifts would blot out the tops of the caragana trees.
We get spats, here and there. This is the best year we've had in a good long time, when it comes right down to moisture. Fifteen minutes here, fifteen minutes there, pale clouds that hover for hours and spit down on us sporadically. Dark clouds that hover on the edge of the horizon; high winds and growling thunder that promise us rain, send the scent, and lie, lie, lie.
You don't know where you're going, and you can't see where you've been. Rearview mirrors are nearly useless, even after the rains. The dust trail you kick up behind you as you tear down the gravel obscures everything behind you, and if you meet someone coming the other way, you're just grateful you know the roads, know where they turn and where the gravel changes.
The sloughs are dried up -- empty holes in the landscape where wild grasses grow, surrounded by a circles of trees (red and diamond-bark willows, poplars, the occasional maple or saskatoon) and prairie shrub. The ditches, where ducks and geese used to nest, are full of dried up reeds and cat-tails that dance and weave in the wind.
It's green this year, in its own way. Not the rain forest, poster paint, John Deere green you can see in pictures of our yard from six, seven years ago. I look at them, and I realize how much I forget. That green isn't just grasshoppers, a plague spreading through yellow canola blossoms and the gold of ripened wheat. That green crayons are only artificial in that they can't capture the sheer scope of the spectrum between yellow and blue.
And I tell myself I remember rain showers.
Hard, heavy, three day rains; puddles collecting in the yard until we had to run out in the downpour to trench the them through the gravel and grass so we'd be able to get in and out to the line road. Water running down the window panes, loud enough in the gutters and downspouts you could hear it even above the droplets drumming out a steady beat on the shingles. (Moneymoneymoneymoney)
Droplets trickling down my face, catching in my lashes and cool at the nap of my neck. The scent of crushed morning glories and caragana blossoms. I'm sure I remember what it felt like to stand in the trees and let the last of the rain shake down to my tongue as the sun started to peek between the branches, bark dyed black with water.
Clean-washed gravel, bright beneath thinning clouds. We'd go rock hunting and return with our pockets stuffed, sneakers squelching and pants soaked from the hem up as dew was drawn up the fabric. By the time our treasures were dry, they'd have lost their luster: Quartz clouded, shining veins of silver and gold hidden in plain grey stone, dragon hearts fading into misshapen lumps of rock the colour of dried blood.
I still have some of them, in a small jewelery box. They're on top of my dresser, between the jungle of flowers I've been given and have dried, and the bottle of strawberry wine I was given for grad by a friend.
I remember, I'm sure, thunderstorms. Great grey clouds, low and pregnant over the Saskatchewan horizon. Sitting in the living room and watching eagerly out the glass doors for the first flash of lightning. Waiting to count the seconds between the broken shards of light and the grumbling retorts of thunder, calculating the distance to the heart of the storm.
I'm sure I remember, only perhaps these are the stories I tell myself.
I don't remember the last time I saw a crocus.
We're pushing four years drought. It's been five since we had a decent snow -- these days, the drifts struggle cover the seats of picnic tables. I remember when we'd have to dig to find the tops, when falling through and getting stuck was a serious concern. My uncle remembers when the drifts would blot out the tops of the caragana trees.
We get spats, here and there. This is the best year we've had in a good long time, when it comes right down to moisture. Fifteen minutes here, fifteen minutes there, pale clouds that hover for hours and spit down on us sporadically. Dark clouds that hover on the edge of the horizon; high winds and growling thunder that promise us rain, send the scent, and lie, lie, lie.
You don't know where you're going, and you can't see where you've been. Rearview mirrors are nearly useless, even after the rains. The dust trail you kick up behind you as you tear down the gravel obscures everything behind you, and if you meet someone coming the other way, you're just grateful you know the roads, know where they turn and where the gravel changes.
The sloughs are dried up -- empty holes in the landscape where wild grasses grow, surrounded by a circles of trees (red and diamond-bark willows, poplars, the occasional maple or saskatoon) and prairie shrub. The ditches, where ducks and geese used to nest, are full of dried up reeds and cat-tails that dance and weave in the wind.
It's green this year, in its own way. Not the rain forest, poster paint, John Deere green you can see in pictures of our yard from six, seven years ago. I look at them, and I realize how much I forget. That green isn't just grasshoppers, a plague spreading through yellow canola blossoms and the gold of ripened wheat. That green crayons are only artificial in that they can't capture the sheer scope of the spectrum between yellow and blue.
And I tell myself I remember rain showers.
no subject
Last winter I couldn't even make a snowman.
And while the summers are hot, they are in no way comparable to the heat from my youth. The sun would scorch the tops of your ears in only a few minutes, and the heat waves would last for days upon days.
The only way the heat ever stopped was from 3 days of straight downpour.
This summer I need a sweater at night, and it only drizzles. While I used to run outside for only a minute with lil sis and be drenched to the core, now there is hardly need to bring an umbrella.
Where did summer go? Where is the snow?
~thoughts from Friendly Manitoba