Something must have upset Mother Nature for her to flex her muscles like that!
There we were working outside making sure the broiler chicks had enough feed and water, when all of a sudden the sky turned a very dark and menacing bluish grey, the colour of lead! My wife and I looked up and intoned the old children's song: "Rain, rain go away, come again another day!" I guess that was what upset her, because all of a sudden we find ourselves in the middle of a torrential rainstorm!
Good thing we always keep the door to the barn tied open, as the horses ran in there for shelter! We got the dogs and hurried into the house. The hammering of the raindrops on the roof sounded like musical drum rolls, and then just to make a point, Mother Nature threw in a crescendo by pelting us for 20 minutes with hail the size of marble playing balls!
The noise of the hail on the barn roof spooked the horses, and they came galloping out of the barn! We could barely see the barn which is only about 50 feet in front of the house, not because of fog, but because of the density of the hail storm! Then we heard a dripping sound inside of our house, and sure enough the water was dripping down along the outside of the chimney of the wood stove, and also from the ceiling vent in the bathroom. We quickly put out some pots to collect the water, and mopped the floor! The rain and hail stopped just as suddenly as it had started, but then about a half hour later, Mother Nature gave us another short heavy burst of rain, just to emphasize her point! We've had rain here before, but never had a leak inside the house, so the pelting of the hail must have created some way for the rain to penetrate into the attic.
Good thing that we haven't put out our tomatoes yet. Those plants are still in their original pots, and are carried into the house at night, just to make sure that we will have some tomatoes later on. This year we planted a joint garden with our daughter at her place in Preeceville, which is coming along nicely, as we did not have time to properly prepare a spot here. We will work on that for next year. However, with all this rain, we sure find out where all the low spots are on our property.
The rain reminded me of the following story: A long time ago in communist Russia, there was a famous weatherman named Rudolf. He always had a 100 per cent accuracy rate for his forecasts of the weather conditions for his area. The people loved and respected him for his faultless forecasts. He was particularly good at forecasting rain. One evening, despite the clear skies, he made the prediction on the 6:00 p.m. news that a violent rainstorm was approaching. It would create floods and he warned the people to take proper precautions and be prepared for the worst. Arriving home later that evening, his wife met him at the door and started arguing with him that his weather prediction that evening, was the most inane thing she had ever heard.
This time, she said, he had made a terrible mistake. There was not a cloud anywhere in the sky, and as a matter of fact, it was the most beautiful day they had ever had, and it was obvious that it was not going to rain! He asked her to be quiet and listen to him. If he said it was going to rain, then it would rain! They argued back and forth for hours, and finally went to bed totally exhausted. Sure enough, during the night they got hit with the worst rainstorm they had ever experienced. When Rudolf and his wife got out of bed in the morning, they saw all the water that had fallen and accumulated during the night, the streets of their village were like small rivers.
"See," said Rudolf, "I told you it was going to rain!" His wife admitted that once again his prediction came through, but she wanted to know how he could always be so accurate! To which he replied: "Rudolf the Red knows Rain Dear!"
