rain – In the Woods

after…

“Shelter along the Appalachian Trail” by Carol M. Highsmith

The forest behind my house is already becoming something new, I notice, as I walk trails that used to be shady. With so many fallen giants, the floor now lies under open sky. I count sprouting acorns by the dozens, arching their necks and reaching for a new bonanza of sunlight. I have so many hopes for this place I love. Mostly that we’ll rise like these seedlings from our scoured landscape, blessed with the kindness we’ve shared with our neighbors and the will to extend our care to those who follow behind us on these paths.
~ Barbara Kingsolver
(Southern Living, May 2025, “The Heart of Appalachia”)

On September 27 last year Hurricane Helene tore through Appalachia, affecting the community in Virginia where author Barbara Kingsolver lives. It also devastated 29 of North Carolina’s 100 counties, which are part of the same geographic region. (The county where we live is in the Piedmont region.) For some reason I never mentioned this disaster on this blog last year, probably because I couldn’t process what I was learning about it in real time.

Our grandchildren had no school that day so we had planned to take them to the Carolina Tiger Rescue. The day before, the weather forecasters warned of torrential rain for our area but the tour is by reservation only and the website said it would happen rain or shine. So we were prepared and bought rain ponchos for the four of us. But that morning the Rescue cancelled the tour and we stayed home. I’m glad we didn’t risk getting caught in a flash flood on the roads. It rained a lot and we had two tornado warnings during the day, which sent us to hunker down in the bathroom, but thankfully we weren’t hit. The disruption to our lives was nothing compared to what was happening to our neighbors only a few hours away.

A year earlier in October, we had stayed for a weekend getaway in the beautiful town of Black Mountain. We had a wonderful time walking through the town, visiting Mount Mitchell, hiking the Balsam Nature Trail in the state park, and driving along the scenic Blue Ridge Parkway. Little did we know Black Mountain would experience catastrophic flooding from the storm. Roads and bridges were damaged or washed away. The pictures we saw on the news were shocking and sobering. But since then the stories being shared of kind people helping one another have been heartwarming. I hope we can plan another visit some day.

However, the severely limited federal response under the current administration has been disturbing. According to our governor:

In addition to the $13.5 billion that I am requesting of Congress in new appropriations, North Carolina has yet to receive billions of dollars that Congress worked together on a bipartisan basis to appropriate last December. Just as I asked in February, I am urging federal agencies to take action to unlock those funds so we can put them to work as soon as possible where they are desperately needed.

We are grateful for every dollar that brings us a step closer to recovery, yet current federal financial support is not enough. In total, federal support amounts to approximately 9% of the total damage western North Carolina suffered. Many of the largest, most devastating storms, like Katrina, Maria, and Sandy, saw upwards of 70% of damage covered by federal funding, and from available historical data, the federal government has typically covered between 40 and 50 percent of costs caused by major hurricanes. The people of North Carolina deserve a fair shake, just like the residents of other states and territories.

~ Gov. Josh Stein
(Hurricane Helene Recovery, September 15, 2025, Federal Funding Request)

on a happier note

The clearing rests in song and shade.
It is a creature made
By old light held in soil and leaf,
By human joy and grief,
By human work,
Fidelity of sight and stroke,
By rain, by water on
The parent stone.
~ Wendell Berry
(This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems)

It seems like it’s been raining and dreary for the past couple of weeks — we even turned the heat on a couple of times. But we’ve been seeing a lot of interesting creatures outside our windows, like this baby bunny I caught with my camera. One morning I saw two opossums scrounging around in the leaf litter for food, and another time I saw a coyote trotting across the back yard.

One day when returning from grocery shopping we were very excited to find four fledgling Carolina wrens trying out their wings on the wax myrtle branches in our front yard. And those darling Carolina chickadees who nested in our birdhouse had some little ones, too. They flit about so quickly I can’t count them but there are at least three and I got to see a parent feeding one of them.

And one delightful afternoon Kat and I designed a dragon garden to fill in the unused birdbath in the front yard. 💜

two days later

5.4.24 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden

Two days after we visited the columbo it was raining. Grateful for the rain, which we do need, I still had a gut feeling that the columbo might be blooming. We grabbed the umbrella and made a quick dash to the botanical garden. At the top of the flower stalk it was still mostly buds, but a few purple-speckled, greenish flowers with yellow stamens were opening!

Most of the images of the columbo found online show it standing straight up. But the top of this one is bending over, as if all those buds were too heavy.

Still in a rush to get out of the rain, I couldn’t help noticing a mountain laurel starting to bloom…

There are many times I do wish I had a waterproof camera! There is so much beauty to be found in a garden on a rainy day.

silent sunday

wildlife in the rain

Waking up on our first morning in Georgia I looked out our vacation cottage window and spotted another life bird! It was raining but Tim got these pictures standing on the covered porch. Exciting! After breakfast, Nate & Shea picked us up and off we headed for Jekyll Island. I didn’t want to use my camera in the rain so we took a quick peek at Driftwood Beach and decided to return in a couple of days when the rain would stop.

White Ibises gather in groups in shallow wetlands and estuaries in the southeastern United States. At each step, their bright red legs move through the water and their curved red bill probes the muddy surface below. As adults, these striking wading birds are all white save for their black wingtips, but watch out for young birds that are brown above and white below. White Ibises nest in colonies in trees and shrubs along the water’s edge, changing locations nearly every year.
~ All About Birds website

Then we headed for Horton Pond where there was a covered observation deck, so I could use my camera. You can see all the raindrops hitting the water.

my family said I should caption this “the standoff”

black-crowned night-heron hiding from the rain

As we were driving along to our next stop, Nate spotted an armadillo on the side of the road. He stopped so I could get a picture. Tim held an umbrella over me and the camera and I got quite a few shots.

After that bit of excitement we headed for the Georgia Sea Turtle Center, Georgia’s only sea turtle education and rehabilitation facility. Tim has been a big sea turtle fan since childhood and it was very interesting learning how they’re helping sea turtles injured and traumatized by human activity. One turtle that captivated me had some weights attached to its shell because it had a spinal injury and the weights helped it to stay balanced while it was swimming. I didn’t get any pictures in there but it was indoors and out of the rain.

In the evening we traveled down to Jacksonville, Florida to visit The Catty Shack Ranch Wildlife Sanctuary, which was all outdoors and it was raining non-stop. Their mission is “to provide a safe, loving, forever home for endangered big cats, and to educate the public about their plight in the wild and captivity.” I left my precious camera in the car so it wouldn’t get wet, but got a few pictures with my cell phone.

one of the caregivers with his small cat co-pilot
they were keeping nice and dry

I caught up with Tim who had found a dry bench under a pavilion to sit for a while. He had been watching a female lion named Rosa and told me that from the way she was acting he thought she had a migraine. My first thought was that animals don’t get migraines but then again, how would we know? They have other diseases similar to ours. Tim certainly has plenty of experience observing someone (me) suffering from a migraine.

pretty sure this is one of the Siberian tigers

After about an hour of us wandering around, the caregivers began feeding the big cats, explaining that they hunt at night in the wild and so they are fed at night here. Each cat had its own method of consuming the food offered, chicken and beef. We were told a bit about each of them, what situations they came from and what their personalities were like. While it was sad to see these wild felines behind fences we appreciated this was the best life they could be having after suffering from the ignorance and cruelty inflicted on them by some thoughtless people.

We returned to our cottage, soaked and tired from a very long rainy day! But grateful for all wildlife we were able to see.

sandhills pyxie-moss

1.28.24 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden

It’s been a challenge getting outside with all the rain we’ve been getting lately. It was drizzling when we got to the botanical garden Sunday afternoon, even though the weather people had promised that the sun would be coming out. We decided to walk anyway.

Along the path we met a staffer named Lauren, who was out in the rain looking for salamanders. We fell into a nice conversation and when we told her about our hunt for seedbox a couple of weeks ago she suggested another plant for us to hunt down. A tiny pyxie-moss was flowering now. She showed us a picture of it on her cell phone, and gave us directions to its location. We found it!

By then it had stopped raining so I went back to the car and got my camera. What a treat to see this plant so rare and unique to the Carolinas!

A rare minute creeping subshrub of xeric areas in the Sandhills region of North Carolina. This is the smaller of our two species of pyxie-moss. Very range-restricted, the entire known range of this species is a handful of counties in North and South Carolina.
… The tiny succulent evergreen leaves are less than 5 mm long. … The flowers rarely set seed and the seeds rarely sprout.
~ Carolina Nature website

After enjoying our discovery we went on to explore more of the soggy gardens. There is always something different to see. It was still a damp, gray day.

This resurrection fern was growing abundantly on one side of a tall tree stump. On the other side of the stump it was all mushrooms.

I couldn’t get around to the back of the stump for a full all-mushroom shot, but you can see where the ferns ended and the mushrooms began in the photo below.

I close my eyes and listen to the voices of the rain. … Every drip it seems is changed by its relationship with life, whether it encounters moss or maple or fir bark or my hair. And we think of it as simply rain, as if it were one thing, as if we understood it. I think that moss knows rain better than we do, and so do maples. Maybe there is no such thing as rain; there are only raindrops, each with its own story.
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer
(Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge & The Teachings of Plants)

Atlantic ninebark (rose family) seed head

And you know the light is fading all too soon
You’re just two umbrellas one late afternoon
You don’t know the next thing you will say
This is your favorite kind of day
It has no walls, the beauty of the rain
Is how it falls, how it falls, how it falls
~ Dar Williams
♫ (The Beauty of the Rain) ♫

Lauren had mentioned that rainy days are the best time to look for salamanders. On warm wet nights from January to March here in the Piedmont they emerge from their underground burrows and head for vernal pools to mate and lay eggs. A week after that artic blast it did get unseasonably warm. I wonder if she found any salamanders after we talked. We kept our eyes open but didn’t see any.

begin this meal with grace

As we begin this meal with grace,
Let us become aware of the memory
Carried inside the food before us:
The quiver of the seed
Awakening in the earth,
Unfolding in a trust of roots
And slender stems of growth,
On its voyage toward harvest,
The kiss of rain and surge of sun;
The innocence of animal soul
That never spoke a word,
Nourished by the earth
To become today our food;
The work of all the strangers
Whose hands prepared it,
The privilege of wealth and health
That enables us to feast and celebrate.
~ John O’Donohue
(To Bless the Space Between Us)

May your Thanksgiving be blessed with good chat and cheer
and the love of family and friends!

that was indeed the rain

Like Rain it sounded till it curved
And then we knew ’twas Wind —
It walked as wet as any Wave
But swept as dry as Sand —
When it had pushed itself away
To some remotest Plain
A coming as of Hosts was heard
That was indeed the Rain —
It filled the Wells, it pleased the Pools
It warbled in the Road —
It pulled the spigot from the Hills
And let the Floods abroad —
It loosened acres, lifted seas
The sites of Centres stirred
Then like Elijah rode away
Opon a Wheel of Cloud —
~ Emily Dickinson
(The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #1245)

We got 1.75″ of rain on Tuesday! Our drought status has moved from severe down to moderate.

severe drought continues

On Tuesday we left early to vote in the Connecticut primary and then drove down to the pond by way of the road along the Thames River. Some of the river’s banks are covered with an unattractive cement ramp, but, I happened to notice a swamp rose mallow popping through it as we were driving by.

Fascinated, I asked Tim to stop the car so I could hop out and examine the wildflower up close. How could it be growing in such an inhospitable spot? It wasn’t that big yet, maybe 2 feet tall, and I wonder how high it might be able to grow there. (They can grow to 7 feet, and the flowers are 4-6 inches in diameter.)

As I was enjoying the close encounter I noticed another wildflower growing through another seam. I loved the shades of purple on its petals.

Back in the car and on to the pond. So sad to see even less water remaining in it. I’m surprised the shorebirds don’t do their fishing over at the beach but they must have their reasons for hanging out here still.

Nature, like a loving mother, is ever trying to keep land and sea, mountain and valley, each in its place, to hush the angry winds and waves, balance the extremes of heat and cold, of rain and drought, that peace, harmony and beauty may reign supreme.
~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
(Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Feminist as Thinker: A Reader in Documents & Essays)

snowy egret with lesser yellowlegs behind him

swamp rose mallow, this one growing by the pond

We’re supposed to get a break from the heat and humidity this weekend, which will be nice, but we also need some rain!