Rainy Day Reflections

Sometimes I forget how nature can swoop in and save the day. A good rain recharges not only my cisterns, but also my sense of abundance.
It started a couple days after our mushroom cultivation workshop. We had set up some oyster mushroom mycelium to grow out of coffee grounds indoors, and we also installed three storm-water-harvesting mushroom beds. I came out of the weekend a bit overwhelmed with all of my new responsibilities. Not just with learning to maintain the environments for our new growing creatures, but also dealing with the five syringes of liquid spore culture in my refrigerator. They need to be transferred to sterilized medium within the next couple weeks. Add that to the maintenance and repairs of going into winter on the homestead, and I assure you it’s a formidable list.

Then the rain came. It was a gentle one. Like music. I could hear the water seeping into the land, into the plants. It brought a deep sense of well being, and even relief. I’m not saying my list got any shorter, but watching the new mushroom beds fill with storm water was quite fulfilling. This rain was not only gentle, but there was a well timed pause in the storm too. It cleared up long enough to walk out along our dirt road and arrange the erosion control rock work I’ve been meaning to do. The ground was soft as pudding and I didn’t even need a shovel.

I do forget sometimes how the whims of nature can make life easier. Despite the reality of living off rainwater and sunlight, so much of the time it seems we must swim upstream against the entropy of our environment.

But this time the message was clear. We’ve been meaning to fill in some flood scoured holes in the restoration project since August. This latest flood was a reminder that nature is sometimes indisputably on our side. The whole flood path in our restoration project filled with a new fine silt and no signs of erosion anywhere. I’ve been waiting for this moisture to transplant some wild cuttings out there. So I’ve started filling in the bare areas with a variety of floodplain plants in our new soft moist soil.
There’s nothing like the meditation of tracking flood patterns through a landscape. This time I learned that I can use a shovel in one hand while holding an umbrella with the other. And after too many times of wandering out in the rain longer than expected, I’ve learned the benefits of rain gear. My wet clothes are dry now after an afternoon of sun. Thank you sun. Thank you rain. It’s a good life.

Written by Amanda Bramble