Rain and Tom Parker

This is a good day. After a week of temperatures in the high 90s and low 100s that baked every living thing to toast, a cool front has arrived with soaking rains. So far this morning I've watched robins, blue jays, cardinals and meadowlarks splash and frolic in the yard, fluffing their feathers and singing joyfully as the dry earth cools and softens. Trees raise their branches to the rain, sighing a collective relief. Brown grass is greening as I write. The scent of rain-washed air drifts through my window on a stirring breeze. Yes, this is a very good day, indeed.

Today is a gift in more ways than one. While checking the blogs I regularly read, I discovered Tom Parker's "Dispatches from Kansas" had TWO new postings. Any new offering by Parker is Literary Nirvana and two is a bonus! So with the sound of gentle rain dripping outside my window, I read Parker's poignant tributes to two old friends: one a man who served his community with a cheerful energy all his life, the other an ancient cottonwood whose shade had sheltered humans and animals for untold centuries. (I couldn't help but imagine how many droughts, healing rains, blizzards, and tornadoes that old tree survived in its lifetime.)

Anyone reading my blog needs to hop on over and read Parker's "Dispatches from Kansas." A link to his site is on my blogroll. Discovering the people, places, and things of rural Kansas through his eyes is a treat akin to a ghastly summer drought relieved by rain.