Washing out.

The rain keeps falling. Just before lunch, I espied these brilliant orange flowers. At first, I passed them by, figuring I'd photograph them later. Then I realized that the rain could start again at any second. I turned around and shot these closest things to bright sunshine I've seen in days. And sure enough, by the time I was done eating lunch, it was pouring.

Flooding isn't in our forecast, and Gambier lies up a hill from the river anyway. But it feels as though the rain pouring on us is flushing out our light and lots of our colors (though not our greens, which are more vibrant than ever).

As evidence of how washed out we're getting, witness the sodden dragon.


Granted, he would seem sharper and less washed out if I hadn't ended up photographing him late in the evening again. But my least favorite effect of continuous rain is that all through the day the light never gets stronger than that of late evening.

A postscript to yesterday: I got home late this evening, after dinner and another round of grading, to find a phone message from my mother--who said, among other things, "I can give you a hint about what your next quilt will be..." That's what I forgot to tell you: the most magic thing about my mother's quilts is that they just keep on coming. She keeps on making them. She keeps on giving them to me. I have a whole legacy of her work with fabric, a whole textile tale of my life as her daughter. Seriously: when I stopped by to see her as a surprise one Sunday night last fall, she sent me back to Gambier the next morning with a new quilt. I did nothing to deserve her as my mother, but I sure am glad we ended up together.