The Music of Summer Rain Rising

Spring is well here and summer is coming on quickly. Missouri weather is odd though: fifty degrees at night, mid-eighties during the day. After spending more than twenty years living in air conditioning both at home and work, I'm pleased that living without it so far has been so easy. The Tumbleweed Hotel is cool during the day on the basement and first floors, warmer on the second, and plenty warm on the top floor starting about nine or ten a.m. and lasting often well past midnight.

This is the way I lived my youth. Cross breezes from open windows, hanging out on the porch, especially around sundown. Fans. The home I was raised in was stone and the bottom floor was cool mostly, even on the warmest days. So I find myself reminded of my childhood and young teen years here in so many ways. I couldn't have hoped for more: both a throwback and a throw forward, changes upon changes, encouraged to abandon old grooves and habits, finding new and better ways to live. And especially so when the house is filled with the bustle and energy and joy of young lives. I am dragged, screaming and giggling with the fun of it all, back to my youth by this new life. Howlelluja!!

The gardeners have shown up again - the community gardeners, not the Holy Road Gardeners, but I look forward to their return too - and have staked out small plots in the newly plowed ground next to our house. Suddenly half-grown tomatoe plants appear, complete with circular vine cages. Good time for this: days are still mostly cool, and it seems we get at least a few minutes of rain every day.

I finally found two bags of bird seed in the barn and now the birds are all over their feeders. It's like they and the squirrels were watching from afar, waiting for the feeders to reappear, and when they did, they all threw a huge party in the yard. All kinds of birds and squirrels - they all seem to get along with each other without squabbling, a relief to this old man, having already raised my kids and dealt with my share of hungry infants. I wish I had a good camera with a telephoto lens. I can't get close enough to this colorful mix of partyers to get a picture of them. The small black and yellow feeder is dominated by small black and yellow birds, some kind of small finches maybe, who clearly own that feeder and rarely allow other birds close to it. Other birds, all kinds but especially redbirds and robins, crowd the larger feeder and knock plenty of seed to the ground, where the squirrels wait and feast. A happy synergy that makes it fun to watch from the kitchen window as I wash dishes.

Shane, my former bandmate, dropped by yesterday. He wants to get a new band going - almost anything will do, as long as he gets to write and blow the sax and sing his songs. So the next project is starting to shape itself, as I knew it would. He and Kathy, the hot punk drummer friend of ours, and maybe Stuart on guitar. We'll see.

Another great year for music in Columbia is emerging. It's irresistable, as always - like steam rising from the streets after a hot summer day's rain.