the rain

"The next day, at about three in the afternoon, the western horizon would be a wall the color of lead. On the front of the wall would be little clouds, pale silhouettes of torn cotton. I'd try to remain calm; baby storms would have been skittering by for a week now, teasing the powdery earth with sprinkles and infusing the dry air with a breath of mountain pine, but nothing had happened yet. I'd go back to work.
A half hour later, a dark blast of wind, laden with the odor of wet dust, would punch through the yard, swirling sand around the windows, rattling the panes. From the yard I'd see a wall towering over the town and know that we weren't going to have to water the asparagus again. We'd stand and inhale for a moment, stretching our arms toward the storm; then, as the hiss of a billion approaching raindrops bore down, we'd run. Pick up the hawk, call the dogs, slam the windows as the rain bashed in, soaking papers five feet from the sill. In the roaring cascade outside, we could not see the ground, hidden in the white smoke of atomized rebounding droplets. And then, hail--BB-sized, pea-sized--drifting in windrows beside the walk; thunder, shaking the house, lightning flashing all around, a nearly simultaneous bang and flicker. We'd grin and the world would smell like water."
Stephen Bodio, Querencia, Clark City Press 1990, p. 8-9.

Right now, we're in the "baby storms teasing" stage, hoping for the big ones to come in and wet things down.