A soft rain, or a thin drizzle?

I awoke the other morning to quiet grey skies. I looked outside. The colours of the newly opened leaves were muted, and there was a soft rain falling. There were no strident bird calls, drips fell gently into the undergrowth, and everything seemed subdued. It was as though the rain had smoothed away all the hard edges.
A little later on in the day, I looked out again. The clouds and the rain were the same, and it was still quiet, but this time the phrase that popped into my head was that a thin drizzle was falling. To me a thin drizzle is cold, and I felt my spirit sink, and my energy drain away.
I was struck by the difference in perspective between a ‘soft rain’ and a ‘thin drizzle’. It wasn’t the rain that had changed, but how I perceived it. And isn’t that the same sometimes in our lives? We all have difficulties and problems to deal with, but it’s not the problems themselves that affect us so much, but the way we look at them. So is there a thin drizzle falling in your life at the moment? Then change your perspective, look at it with new eyes, and see that it is actually a soft rain.

Soft Autumn Days

Today is a dull drizzly day, and the usually vibrant Autumn colours are gently muted. A soft grey blanket of cloud envelopes the sky, and a fine rain is falling, hardly more than a mist. But there is also a calm and a peace that seems to soothe the soul. A slight breeze rustles the almost bare topmost branches of the copper beech tree along the road, loosening the last few russet leaves. The sycamore around the corner is a surrounded by a carpet of yellow, and my garden is liberally sprinkled with rusty-brown oak and hornbeam leaves;  horse-chestnut leaves that fall the colour of  English mustard and then fade to dirty brown; acid yellow wisteria leaves and flaming red and orange leaves from the sumac, to name but a few.
Autumn is moving on apace, soon to be squeezed out by the rough winds, and icy rain and sleet of Winter.

Would anyone like a weather swap?

We’re in the middle of yet another dreary, wet day here in England. It was like it when I got up, I even had to put my light on this morning to read by, and it’s JULY! We should be basking in hot summer sun, but instead the sky is grey and leaden, and the rain falls relentlessly. It stopped for a few minutes just before lunch, and I snuck out with the dog, but the drizzle had started again before we had even reached the end of the road. The ground is water-logged, and the plants and flowers are hanging heavy, dragging my spirits down with them. I feel out of sorts, and all I can smell now is a wet dog! I know folk around the other side of this globe of ours, would gratefully share some of our ‘wet’ at the moment, and if I could, I’d gladly swap it for a bit of ‘hot and dry’.
The weather is always a topic of conversation here in England, and it never ceases to amaze me when I realise how the weather actually affects my mood. Today I feel head-achy, grey and overcast like the sky, tired and lethargic. I really don’t want to do anything. In fact, if it was winter I think I’d go back to bed and hibernate until the weather perked up a bit!
The weathermen are however promising that the weather will improve next week, I do hope they’re right!

Talking of the Weather…..

We English are for ever talking about the weather, for we have a lot of it to talk about.  Today for example it has drizzled, it has showered, and we have had sheets of rain, all in the space of a morning.  Then, just after lunch there was a little tear in the clouds, a smudge of watery blue beyond the billowing grey. The clouds parted slightly, there was a brief glimpse of the sun, and then it was gone again, beaten into obscurity by the blanketing clouds.  Now a couple of hours later it’s bright sunshine once more; but how long will it last…..?

Along with lots of weather we have lots of weather sayings or idioms. If we are not well, we are ‘under the weather’, and when in trouble we are ‘under a cloud’. The ‘heavens can open’, and all of a sudden it’s ‘raining cats and dogs’.  A cheerful person can be a ‘ray of sunshine’ or an angry one can have a ‘face like thunder’, and then ‘storm off in a temper’.  We’re told to ‘look on the bright side’, and when happy, we’re said to be ‘on cloud nine’.  When over worked we’re ‘snowed under’, or if we disapprove we may give a ‘frosty stare’.

So, ‘come rain or shine’, ‘make hay while the sun shines’, and  remember ‘that every cloud has a silver lining’.  And if you ‘weather the storm’, and don’t have your ‘head in the clouds’, in the end everything will be ‘as right as rain’.