My sorrow, when she’s here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane. ~Robert Frost
This garden season, week after week brought no relief as I wished for rain. Around here we are usually gray more than sunny with weekly rain or snow bringing spring and fall flooding. We wish for warm sunny days, but this year the wish was much different. And I have to say after months of scorching heat and bone dry weather, I will never complain about rain and gray skies again (OK I’ll try not to).
Throughout the brutal summer I often thought of rain, what I missed about it and why it as important to me as it was to my garden. Why I love 
to garden in rain, walk in rain and listen to it drum on the roof? Did you know rain has a scent? It does to me and when I smell rain, I am at once calm, serene and peaceful. So what is it about the rain that I long for, live for?
I believe it is the healing properties of rain that draw me in. I witnessed it in my garden when we had the occasional shower that barely wet the cracked soil in summer. Even that tenth of an inch would temporarily perk up the plants, and would give me hope of relief. But it wasn’t until the fall rains began that the garden finally healed. We were back to our weekly, almost daily, showers. They would come sometimes fierce with wind and soak the earth, and pass through as quickly as they had come. Then the sun would shine against the dark gray skies and the entire garden would sparkle, as if it was smiling, joyous.
There is a difference between a spring rain and an autumn rain. I feel an immediate strength from a rain that comes in springtime. As the garden thaws and wakens, it is nourished and able to grow with the rains that softly arrive. Of course the violent storms with thunder and lightning are fearsome, but they beckon me like the roller coaster that I fear, but still must ride. A fear to overcome and an adventure not to be missed. I ride the storm and marvel at its power and the renewal it brings.
With fall rains, I feel a melancholy with the rain, a sorrow as if I am grieving. The garden is waning and saying goodbye, and I am having to accept its final farewell.
Rain in fall seems to call on my soul to look within and come to grips with what 
is bothering me, what issues I have yet to face. Those I have bravely smiled through and never talked about. But they are still there lurking beneath the soil waiting for when all facades are stripped away, and I am faced with myself. No hiding. I must deal with it. In these times the rain calls me as if weeping allowing me to cry in solitude and heal those inner tortures.
And yet I still feel the freshness of the rain, I gain strength finally from it as it washes away my troubles. And maybe that is why I have always been drawn to water because it replenishes my body, mind and soul with its energy, its healing. I am renewed by water as my body is enveloped in it, soaking into every pore. It cleanses my soul this gift of rain. It reconnects me with Mother Earth.
Rain is as important to us as it is to the earth as it washes away all the imperfections, absolving us all. And even as I write this, a powerful storm is bearing down on the east coast of the United States. It has its bulls eye aimed right at us here in central NY. We do not know how much damage this storm will leave behind with its gale force winds and flooding rains. But I know as surely as there will be a storm, once it has passed we will heal, we will go on as life always does. We are one with this world and try as we may to escape the pain it may bring, we will not be able to always dodge it. It will come with its teeming rains and wash away the impurities while laying waste as nature does.
So I accept the healing powers of rain; all of them as I weep in joy and sorrow knowing it will nourish my soul once again.
Rain fall down release my pain
Your healing touch, my heartache drains.
Out flows the gray, as warm winds blow
Dry my tears with sunlight of gold.
Donna Donabella
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Next up on the blog: Next Monday it will be time for another Gardens Eye Journal to look back at October in the garden. And as I look ahead in November, anything be left blooming? I will have a wonderful gardening book to share, and another wildflower lined up at the end of the month. I hope you can join me as fall turns colder and wilder.
I will be linking in with Michelle@Rambling Woods for her Nature Notes meme. It is a great way to see what is happening in nature around the world every Wednesday.
As always, I’ll be joining Tootsie Time’s Fertilizer Friday.
I hope you will join me for my posts once a month , at Beautiful Wildlife Garden. The latest post is up now about the snakes returning to the garden. My next post will be on the 13th.
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