Rain in Colorado

My back garden is little, maybe six metres squared. There’s a concrete patio on one end and I’ve filled it with a couch and cushions, overflowing tubs of tiny snapdragons and hot peppers, thyme and cherry tomatoes. The things I’ve learned will grow in this inhospitable place.

It’s dry and dusty here. There is literal, actual tumbleweed in the streets. It feels like what it is - a spot on the barren plains, watered by a stolen river to make it habitable (who am I kidding, the whole place is stolen, not just the water). The native grasses are beige, the squirrels grey. Even the birds seem made of dust. Like they could blow away in a cloud if you touched them.

But sometimes, not often, but sometimes, like today, it rains. And my parched English soul drinks it in.

The earth seems happy too. It gives off a pleasing, loamy, fresh smell. The changing leaves shine glossy green and yellow as drips roll off them. The sparrows’ dust gets washed away to reveal their striations of cream, mouse-brown, and palest pink. (I can see them as I write this, fluffed up against the damp, lined up on the gutter watching me, willing me to leave so they can get back to their sunflower seeds.)

The squirrel too is different in the soggy air. He has blonde highlights at the edge of his tail and traces of russet in his coat like his lost English cousins. His back shines silver, his eyes pure onyx black.

Maybe there is beauty in the dust too. Maybe the rain just washes out my eyes and lets me see more clearly. I will channel Mary Oliver today and be idle and blessed and pay attention.