Verdant

It rained again yesterday. A quiet rain, falling on and off, making the streets glisten under cloudy skies. It looked like fall had come early, sidewalks dotted with umbrellas and those who didn’t have shelter sprinting down the street.

It’s been a summer of rain, feels like thunderstorms rolled in almost every day, dumping buckets of water on the city. This summer, I learned that most thunderstorms happen between 4 and 9 p.m. and most of the storms we’ve had this year seem to happen after dinner. And I loved it, loved sitting inside watching the sunset sky turn colours I’ve only seen in paintings.

Loved it as the after-sunset sky flashed lightning, rumbles travelled across the heavens and large drops of rain hit my windows with splat after splat, each drop seemingly the size of a ripe, black cherry.

People don’t like it, this summer so unlike other Canadian summers. Barely any heat waves, barely any long stretches of steaming heat leaving us panting in the noonday sun. Canadian summers just aren’t supposed to be like this, mid-20s, clouds building in the middle of the afternoon and before you know it, the flash above followed by a boom and it’s time to run for cover again.

But I don’t mind and not just because the summer has felt like a warmer version of the Danish summers in which I spent my first 20 years, never-ending rain being an integral part of life when you grow up surrounded by ocean. No, the reason I not only don’t mind, but actually like it, is because accompanying all the wet is the green. This summer, the city is greener than I’ve seen in years, maybe even decades. Green is everywhere, nourished by the buckets and buckets of water upended upon us, flourishing, growing, sprouting everywhere, bright green, dark green, glowing green and after a long winter of masses of white – remember this? And this? – green is good. Green is very, very good.

Every day when I go out, my eyes drink in the green and I can feel it as a balm on my eyes, cooling a soul burned by months of seeing nothing but bare branches against the white. Seeing nothing but shades of black, gray and brown, spindly, skeletal fingers reaching for the sky, reaching for you as you pass on the sidewalk, surrounding you until your view of the world becomes monochrome. And this summer off the rain is anything but monochrome, it is bright, technicolour, vivid splashes of colour, of life, bursting everywhere with the slightest provocation, taking over a city of concrete and bricks and making it look like the countryside. And in late summer, instead of lawns looking like hay from the lack of water, instead of plants drooping, wilted and exhausting, they are instead so green it looks almost fake. And every day, I store the green in my soul, like squirrels store nuts for the winter, so I’ll survive the coming season of monochrome.

And all of this green is because of the rain and so, I am grateful for the buckets and buckets of water upended upon us this year.

Besides, it isn’t snow and really, what else do you need?