Greening up after ice cube rain

Well, hail

It's been a cool and wet few weeks at the base of the Rocky Mountains, and every plant is drinking it in. Leaves and flowers, renewed, stretch toward the sun in the dewy mornings, calling to the pollinators buzzing by.

We had days and days of rain and gray skies that made me wonder if we would emerge. The goats barely left their houses, the chickens glared at the sky, and the children clawing at the walls started to make me worry our house wouldn't survive another day of them trapped indoors.

But, like the 41st day after Noah launched his ark, the sun burned off enough of the clouds to peek through and remind us we don't live in Seattle.

Those long slow spring rains manage to soak into the ground and permeate the soil, renewing the landscape. Everything feels like it's on the upswing until the afternoons roll around.

Colorado spring afternoons are filled with trepidation, waiting to see if everything is about to get pelted with what my son calls "ice cube rain."

Hail can quickly strip trees, ruin gardens, wreck a roof, and make your vehicle do its best impression of a golf ball. Like icy locusts, a wave of hail can do massive damage quickly and then leave nothing behind but puddles on the pavement.

Rain is the comma of weather phenomena - a brief pause from your regularly scheduled program, and snow is a period - the place to take a breath. Hail is then an exclamation point - a sharp roar of excitement dissipating as quickly as it rolls in.

But then again, after the punctuation comes the following sentence. Our sentences outside right now are verdant and bursting with promise.

After returning from Cambodia, I was hit with COVID and other illnesses, probably predictable from some intensive cross-global travel. It felt like a personal hail storm. Sickness, coupled with the end-of-school activities, and trying to get caught up on farm chores and work contracts, wore me down.

But, rather than looking at those struggles as sheer negatives, I look around at all the green and think of the next sentence - what will it look like for me?

I hope to model the next few weeks like the field out my window - pummeled with "ice cube rain" just yesterday, it's taken that frozen water and used it to grow grass - seeming an entire inch overnight.

I, too, need to take that punctuation mark and start the next sentence - I hope it's a green one.