Drizzly day

I'm not a big fan of the rain, unless it's torrential downpours accompanied by a light and sound show. Today it's drizzling. It's gray. It's dreary. It's May! It's sort of like home when fog covers the valley for most of May and June. We've come up with cute slogans: May gray; June gloom. And gloomy it is. I was hoping to go celebrate the weekend with a long walk down the riverside or frolicking in the fields, photographing plants and wildlife. Instead, I'm being a wuss, staying inside, and baking. I'm trying to appreciate the rain. The greenness of England is one of the things I love most about it. Rainy days are the price you pay for such beauty.

Earlier, I was looking out the kitchen window, eating corn on the cob (a summer food) in my pajama's and being squirted in the face as I bit into the kernels. A wood pigeon emerged from beneath a little copse of hawthorn that grows along side the building. It was sheltering from the rain. Then it stepped out and sat with its back in the rain and its head undercover. Two more wood pigeons emerged, and then the little family of three went picking at the leaves of a plant I couldn't identify. I watched them as the rain washed the open window and the cool arm swirled around its edges. A crow flew by, circling the building at the level of the third floor. A gaggle of geese silently glided towards the river. A pair of swallows flew towards campus. A lone cyclist pedaled down the path by the river.