ghostly silhouettes

ghostly silhouettes

after rain and wind, dark leaf

stains on bare pavement

Two solid days and nights of much-needed rain, accompanied by stiff wind that rips the colorful autumn leaves from the trees and harries them along the ground. Oak and maple leaves, plastered to the pavement by the rain, seep their pigments into the porous concrete. Then the wild wind blows them away, leaving dark silhouettes, ephemeral artwork.

fairy ring mushrooms

fairy ring mushrooms

magically appear after

a late summer rain

Fairy ring mushrooms popped up overnight, conjured by the magic of rain. They emerge, not in a ring, but in a sinuous curve following the wood chip path to the house. The spores waited through the drought for this moment, perhaps stored away in the bark of the tree that died and got turned into firewood and wood chips for the walkway. The delicate full caps look like powdered breasts with brown nipples. But when the mushrooms first emerge, they look utterly phallic. In the rain, the fragile fungi only last the day, then begin to fray and tatter, finally falling over, revealing fluted bellies.  

swimming in the rain

swimming in the rain --

half immersed in warm water,

half spattered with cold drops

Once you're wet, a little rain hardly matters. But I'm in the minority on that score. In fact, I'm the only person swimming, some might say foolishly, in the rain. It's a rare experience, the contrast of the relatively warm water in which I'm immersed with the cold raindrops spattering my arms and face. I've also been known to swim in a lake with a glacier at one end. Now there was an experience in contrast, my body hot from hiking, plunging into the frigid water. Of course, once you're numb, you don't feel anything anymore, so icy water hardly matters.

scent of casa blanca

scent of casa blanca

saturates the moisture

brimming evening air

Rain in the morning, hard, brief. Mackerel clouds and moisture linger all day. Coming home in the evening, the moisture-laden air is heavy with the sweet scent of Casa Blanca Oriental Lilies.

a bat trapped inside

a bat trapped inside 

echolocates its way to

the open window

Friday the thirteenth, a time of new beginnings. Playing the Maya turtle ocarina finally brought rain today, a soft, soaking, spring rain. Standing in the kitchen early this morning, looking out at the saturated hues of green, I catch something dark falling down on the other side of the window. A leaf? But it seems to be inside the sun room, not outside. I open the sliding glass door and immediately a small winged creature begins fluttering back and forth the length of the sun room. A bird? No, the movements are too quick. A bat then. 
          But how did it get in? All the windows are closed. Thinking fairly quickly for this early, I go out on the porch, remove the screen from one of the windows on the east end and open the window. The bat flies toward the windows but lands just above the closed window, clinging to the wooden frame. With a broom I gently coax the bat to start flying again, but it keeps missing the open window. Getting the message, I crank the other window open wide and this time the bat echolocates the opening and swoops out. Now we're wondering if the sounds we've been hearing above our heads are not squirrels or mice but a colony of bats that have been wintering between the roof and the ceiling. But how did this one get into the downstairs sun room?
          Bats are mysterious, but also beautiful and useful. I have always loved watching their graceful acrobatic flight on warm evenings as they catch enormous quantities of harmful insects, consuming a third of their body weight in half an hour. Coincidentally, this year is the Year of the Bat, as proclaimed by Bat Conservation International, and this week, 9-12 April, is Bat Awareness and Appreciation Week. I'm right in tune with the times, my early morning experience making me aware and also appreciative of bats, whether in or around our home.
          Bats continue to be in the news because of the threat of white-nose syndrome, a cold-loving fungus that has killed at least one million hibernating North American bats in the Northeast since 2006 and is spreading westward. In the rain-dark light this morning, I didn't notice whether our bat had a white nose. If it did hibernate in our house, it would certainly have been warmer than in a cave or one of the bat houses we have attached to our sheds. However, I will report our errant bat to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, which is collecting information about unusual behavior in bats in the early spring when they emerge from hibernation, such as difficulty flying and flying during the daytime. Our little bat seemed to be flying normally and I'm sure it was flying in the daytime only because we disturbed its sleep.
          My other concern for the bats is our new wind turbine because a number of bat deaths have been reported under wind turbines. Researchers have found that the majority of bats were killed because a sudden drop in air pressure near blades caused injuries to the bats' lungs, called barotrauma. Respiratory systems in birds can withstand such drops but bat lungs cannot. Fortunately, scientists have shown that slowing turbine blades to near motionless in low-wind periods significantly reduces bat mortality. This makes sense because bats don't like to fly when it's really windy, which is when the turbines are reaping the most energy. So this system would be a boon for both bats and the production of energy from the wind. Hurray!

rain -- too warm for snow

rain -- too warm for snow,

too cold to go out -- orchid

blooming in the window

Late winter, a line of snow hauling across the state takes a turn north, missing us by a few miles. I wake to the sound of hard rain on the roof. Snow or rain, I welcome any form of precipitation for the sake of the plants and animals. But I'm not inclined to go for a walk on a cold, gray rainy day. Down the road in my neighbor's kitchen window, an orchid opens its butterfly wings to the light.

winter umbrellas

winter umbrellas --

hard rain turns the gravel hills

into slippery slides

Mid-December, thunder and lightning, hard rain all night, still falling lightly all day. I exchange snow boots for rain boots and set forth covered by a rainbow umbrella. No sign of sunken ice in Pilgrim Creek, which is running fast and full with muddy brown water. The glaze of ice on our roads is gone, washed away, along with sand and gravel, turning the hills into slippery mud slides gouged with braided channels that look like river deltas. As I creep up a hill in low gear, a mouse the color of the gray mud streaks across in front of me, skinny tail sticking straight out. Though completely wet, the tiny creature with its little claws has far better traction on the slick road than I do. In town, wet umbrellas left open in the lobby of the student center blossom like brilliant flowers.

dark blue mamma clouds

dark blue mamma clouds

pendulous udders 

blushing pink at dawn

Hovering low in the west at dawn, these mamma clouds looks like the fierce Boreas with his cheeks puffed out, not the gentle Zephyr. The lobe of pendulous clouds forms the face of a lion, ready to roar and spit sleet or hail. However, these udder-like clouds are not harbingers of stormy weather, as some claim, but tend to trail after storms. Sure enough, as the bumpy blanket quickly moves on, the sky clears and the first rays of sunrise pour out from the east, bathing the blue bulges in rosy light. 
          Yet after midnight I am awakened with a jolt by a bolt of bright white light that penetrates my closed eyelids. A moment later, boom! Ah, lightning and thunder, must be Zeus making a dramatic entrance. The rain comes down hard, carving deep grooves in the gravel road, filling the creek to overflowing.