The roads, normally dusty red like a clay pot, become slick, shiny and rutted with each passing pickup truck. The driveway is a quagmire of water and mud. For a time the driveway, our link to the outside world, is unpassable. Planks are laid across it so we can walk from the house to the shop without sinking to our ankles in mud. We are in isolation, but snug from the weather. The pantry is stock piled more from habit then anything else so we are sufficient unto ourselves.. The house becomes a sanctuary were warmth, food and family provide the extent and scope of our world.

In the fall the rain provides the moisture for sowing the seed and nurturing of the newly sprouted wheat grass. The wheat thrives with these cool wet days. You can almost watch it grow by the hour. The bright green of the wheat sparkles in the morning dew. The leaves are weighted down with droplets of water. By noon the wheat grass has dried and the sun darkens the color of the leaves as they stretch to find the light. Hundreds of thousands of plants lined up in shallow furrows, seeking the rain from the sky, light from the sun and nutrients from the soil. The tops of the furrows dry first leaving bands of dark red damp furrow bottoms alternating with the dusty red tops.

Even during the summer harvest of the wheat, when a rain means a delay in the cutting or worse, loss of the years work from a hail or windstorm. Rain also means the possibility for the planting of summer crops of Milo or sorghum. A summer rain helps stave off and relive the long hot summer of scalding southern winds that fill your eyes and nose with a fine red dust. At night when is it so hot in the house that just touch of a sheet feels like the sun beating on your skin and the ceiling fan just stirs the hot air around. The sound of a single rain drop on the window sill will bring goose bumps up on your skin just thinking about the coolness that the rain will bring. The second drop brings hope and the third gives way to an avalanche of drops that bring relief. And soon, you are fast asleep to the music of the rain.