Sweet rain and gratitude

Before I grew vegetables, I managed to be grudgingly grateful for the rain. I am a sun lover, and rain gets in the way. 'At least the grass will be happy,' I conceded.

We have had three glorious days of baking heat. The earth is parched, cracked. I went to bed last night with a plan to water the vegetable patch today. My veg patch is a little way from the house, and so this involves two hoses and a lot of time and effort.

This morning it is raining. It is raining on my yellow courgettes and my raspberries. It is raining on my embryonic runner beans and my scarlett chard. Sweet rain.

After planning this post, my Daily Dharma email arrived. Sychronicity:

The roots of all living things are tied together. Deep in the ground of being, they tangle and embrace. This understanding is expressed in the term nonduality. If we look deeply, we find that we do not have a separate self-identity, a self that does not include sun and wind, earth and water, creatures and plants, and one another.

Joan Halifax Roshi, from Essential Zen

Tangled roots. Precisely.

And who knows what else we might be grateful for, if we were able to find a different perpective?

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I've really enjoyed writing here this week. Something else to be grateful for. Thank you for reading!