"We Need Powerful Rain"

The day the rain began to fall, the rain barrel man, Bryan Buckley called me about our rain barrels. He said, "The blessed rain has fallen." A perfect thing for the rain man to say. We have had no rain for almost 2 months, and the drought is keenly felt in Belvedere. Our lawn is green because Bret nurtured it like a newborn calf. We had been warned and worked over by the people who put it down. Everyone was concerned about landscaping in August. The seed/straw combinations put down in Belvedere did not produce much green, and the trees are suffering.



But the words, "We need powerful rain," came from my little girl, Eleanor, age 4. My husband asked her why. "Mud," she said. She is a mud specialist and I let her revel in it. With the recent rain, she donned her raincoat and boots and went out to find the muddy places. Also, she loves frogs. I went down to the Zone after the rain and said, "Eleanor, I saw many frogs down in the Zone," hoping to pique her curiosity so that we would go down there together. "What kind?" she asked. Wow, I thought, she is mentoring me. This is a mentor's question, getting the student to think about species identification. "Mainly tree frogs, " I said, "and some leopard frogs."

"Oh," she said. "I want a green frog." She paused. "And toads. . . . they are my favorite."

She's four years old and knows the frogs. Awesome.