It was ever so pleasant, this morning, just sitting on the porch listening to the rain. It’s a sound I had almost forgotten with our drought. The moisture leaching, searing sun has shriveled my energy and my yard to a prune during the past few weeks. The poor yard had totally forgotten the healing power of the rain as ever blade of grass has struggled to survive in the parched earth aided only by my anemic watering routine.

The sound was so good I alternated from the open front porch to my enclosed fortress of solitude that was once a back porch. The temperature was so wonderfully cool and the dark skies such a welcome sight from the intense glare of the sun that I just sat savoring every minute of this refreshing relief from the misery of the summer heat.

Every time it rains like this and I get to sit on the porch, I think about my uncle who lived near my favorite place in South East Texas. He was a farmer and depended a lot on the rain. After he got too old for farming he would sit on the porch a lot. He often had a shotgun across his lap waiting for any bird that would dare invade his garden. He liked to comment that he was just sitting there waiting for it to rain because he was too lazy to get up for a drink of water. He was a great hunter of squirrels and a marvelous storyteller. I loved to listen to him on the porch. He enjoyed telling about the time he went to college. He went to A&M for a weekend course in his younger days and said the only thing he remembered was seeing a baboon. It’s the first time he had actually seen a wild jungle animal. He was a big reader and far more knowledgeable than most college graduates. That uncle was my role model for retirement. He has been gone for a number of years now but I think about him every time it rains and I am on the porch. The rain not only revives the earth, it resurrects fond memories.

I guess we will now fall back into our routine of cloudless skies, triple digit temperatures and watering. The rain was a welcome stranger this morning and made porch sitting even more enjoyable. To jog the memory bank about my uncle with stories about baboons and country tales is about as good as it gets.