It's Raining

Where I live in Virginia things were getting bone dry. I was beginning to think seriously about doing some rain dance type magick to call up the storms. But this morning, the remenants of the tropic storm that came in over Florida on Friday reached us.

And it's a wonderfully gentle rain (at least for now). They are calling for 2 to 4 inches. The frogs are croaking. The birds are singing and there is this wonderful smell of freshly moistened soil.

We have avoided turning on the air conditioners (although I thought my hubby and I would get divorced over it at first) so far this year. Even though the temps have reached nearly 90 degrees, dry heat is very bearable to me. With a fan, I'm comfortable way up near 100 degrees. We may break down after this storm passes and the humidity rises and close down the windows and turn on the switch... but I'm thinking this house is 100 years old and pre-dates air conditioning. People lived here happily and survived just fine without airconditioning.

The house was designed to catch all the cross breezes. With all the windows open, there is nearly always a cross breeze of some sort. We have giant trees over hanging the house (a bad thing in high winds) which provide shade in the hot afternoons. It's actually very comfortable and I find airconditioning at work to be uncomfortably cold. Our electric bill was delightfully low this month -- can I tell you how much THAT influenced my hubby's willingness to continue the experiment?

The only thing we are missing is a screened in porch. I want to build a deck out the back or pour a concrete patio and stick a roof over it and screen it in. Then, when the mosquito count is up, we can move off the front porch and sit in the back. (It might help me reclaim the front porch from all the junk, too).