I have lived my life in greenhouses and rain is always louder on the inside.  Even the first few drops arrive like a resounding chorus.  Then there is the snarling rain…sideways and singular.  Sometimes under taut double-poly the rain has a tinny quality, as though we’re standing under a metal roof.   Finally, the pounding rain arrives, a deafening deluge.   When we run outside the greenhouse…as we have to do to get to our office…the rain is more of a pattering beneath the giant silver maple…did it just slow down?…yet we arrive with soaked shirts and heads.

We received an inch and a half of rain over last night and today.  We slept with our windows open last night…receiving the cool damp air and the sounds of precipitation arriving from the south.  Our cats crawled into bed with damp fur and purring appreciation.

For Kris and I and our Boys…this is ‘camping weather’…reminiscent of many adventures in the Adirondacks of Up-State New York.   Under the rain, we hunker down beneath a giant tarp of nursery white-poly…a solitary greenhouse in the north woods… to sustain our cooking fire throughout the day and evening…reading, talking, cooking and inhaling the smoke that forever blows our way…enjoying perhaps some of our best times.

For some of our landscape friends, this rain will reinvigorate the lawns and enhance their fall business.  For others, this rain will open a season of installations and fall plantings.  For some, the rain will muddy the soil and prevent productive activities for several days.  Many of our landscape customers have sustained themselves with hard-scape installations over the past few years and I am glad for that…as long as they remember to come back for green-scape when conditions improve.

Autumn in the MidWest arrives as a mixed-bag of tricks and treats.  The other day we enjoyed mostly blue skies scattered with frayed cotton-ball-clouds, moving quickly from east to west, their purple undersides flattened against an invisible cushion of resistant air.   Today we enjoy dark overcast and cold rain.  The trees begin to change.  Colored maple leaves gather on the steps to our office.

I’m offering encouragement, once again, to a new generation of squirrels gathering acorns from the giant red oak over our parking lot.

We all need to talk to our squirrels!

People in our industry enjoy and appreciate each passing season in our woods, our ecologies, our gardens… and our lives.

Despite occasional wet weather and tough times…we’re the lucky ones.