What Is That?

You know the feeling. You're sleeping and you slowly become aware of a continuous sound, the dripping of water, a rush sound. When you live in a home as old as mine, I constantly am listening for my "normal" house sounds. If the well kicks on I can hear it. If the fridge hums, it is audible. My house is so quiet I can feel the vibrations of my ceiling fan in the living room when I am upstairs. The village is typically quiet, too.

This almost unnatural quietness in my village...

Which is what makes the reoccurring sound of that one dog with a bark halfway to the sound of a strangling chicken so weird. How the sound of the filtration cycle in the neighbors pool COMPLEX is so out of place. (I kid I am offering valet parking at her waterpark, which is complete with a 20' tall slide, I kid you not.) Which is why the guy with the very vocal Tourret's at the corner of the block and an early body clock is so annoying.

But today is Thursday, so I also get the bang and clatter of the garbage pick-up and the barking dogs they incite, including Faithful Companion.

"Yo, Mom, those men are stealing our trash!" Bark! Bark!

But today, it was the sound of running water that got my attention. Rain. We really haven't had any since Handsome Son's graduation on the weekend of May 26.

Rain. My mother calls with the news at 9 AM. Only Waushara and Waupaca County got this shower, an inch and a half, she says. Places to the east have gotten rain the last couple weeks, most notably New London. One storm brought five inches another a week later four. We had zip. This time it was our turn for our rationed inch and a half.

Still rain ran down my monumental pine. There is a moat around Dr. Darrel Apps' "heliport", my reference to the paving and historic dismounting stones found when he was renovating his property and which he incorporated into his landscape. They hark back to the time when a horse or carriage was the way you would arrive at his home.

Rain.

Too little, too late?

I think so.

But there you have it, the sound of falling rain.

(For those of you that didn't figure out the farm equipment at the top, it's a hay cutter, probably one a horse would pull. The rider would drop the knife at the right and the sheer forward momentum of the very sharp triangular blades would cut the hay while it was pulled by a horse. I have seen these rigged for early tractors so that the tractor driver could by use of a series of pulleys drop the knife without getting off the tractor seat. My dad used to get off and on to drop his when I was small and wouldn't allow me nor my sisters to ride if he was cutting hay with the old 'B.' This one sits as garden relic at the Springwater Volunteer Bridge Park.)