rain, rain, don’t stay away

a typical northern summer has hot days, and cool nights with regular thunderstorms and soaking rains. regular rains means we can grow lush gardens in mere months without irrigation. the fertility of upper midwest is not just the meters of nutrient rich soil left behind by the last ice age, it is also the abundance of fresh water–in all it’s forms. my daughter lives in california now, and one of things she misses the most are summer thunderstorms–the sudden drop in temperature as the cold fronts passes over, the darkening of the sky, the distant rumble of thunder, and then the warm, wet rain. and let’s not forget the loamy smell of of the wet earth the next morning. it’s a beautiful, life-giving, pattern. and for the past several years, it has been…inconsistent. it seems each year we have at least one long stretch of drought (which we are experiencing right now). it is stressing the native plants, especially the trees. i found these dried up spruce tips hanging like frozen tassels on end a mature spruce yesterday. the bright orange color attracted my attention, but on inspection i realized it was this year’s new growth dried up on the tip of each branch. the orange tassels against the otherwise green branches were beautiful. hauntingly so.

dried spruce tips