1) Four glorious days and nights of rain, off and on, enough to soak the ground, but not to get it ookey-muddy that I sink. Wish it did though. 2) We've been in a drought since 2011, not including the one year that the governor and experts said it was over. Really, though, we ought to go back to 2007. The experts said it was over in 2010. Ha!  Poor plants. 3) The experts predict that our part of the world should experience another exceptionally dry winter. I hope not. 4) From four days of collecting rain water and a couple of buckets of grey water from the kitchen, we have filled up a 30-gallon garbage can and a vintage metal milk churn (also called a milk can). Hurrah! 5) Yesterday, I got in a panic that the insurance company hadn't approved my upcoming knee surgery. Usually, it sends me a copy of any authorization it makes for me. Not seeing anything in my online account, I called the orthopedic center. The gatekeeper put me on hold to ask the nurse, returning to say the nurs...

  Plop, plop, plop, plop, plop . . . . "It's raining." I said to the Husband. "It is? It is! The streets are wet." A few minutes later, no more plop sound. That was a couple of hours ago. It's still raining. Simply more gently. I don't even think it's raining until I happen to glance out a window. Last week we had our first winter storm. Have I said that before? By the second morning, the little red wagon was overflowing with water. Amazing! I heard a weather guy say that we made up to 40-something percent of the normal annual average just in that first storm. A few more storms like that and we may not have a drought year. Hoping for the best.

 See the white streaks in the photo? They aren't scratches.  That's rain! Our first rain of the winter, and if the weather guys are correct, we'll be enjoying rain off and on for the next week. Whoooo-hooooo!