We had a pleasant break today from a week of fairly intense heat, possibly the hottest days of the year followed by a Saturday afternoon of rain. Lightning flashes all about in the light gray southern sky. It rumbles and thunders and crashes behind me to the north, the east and west. It sounds like I'm in the middle of a massive electric cloud that's raining onto thirsty ground and recharging the dullness in the air after much heat. A bolt of air-to-air lightning just now darted across the top from east to west leaving a thunderclap in its wake. Aster and Caterpillar are inside the house, Tapo and Tar Baby under the house. I unplugged the computer from the wall, electrical and phone line both, and gathered some items to take to the porch; thermos of hot tea, cup, ballpoint, clipboard, paper, camera and tripod for the flowering Joe Pye in rain.

The rain has calmed down after a fairly intense period of showers, both rain and lightning. The thunder has receded to the distance like a slow F-16.

A hummingbird is out nursing the jewelweed flowers that now I see are expressly designed for the hummingbird beak. The shape of the flower makes a funnel toward a little reservoir at the back. Around the mouth of the funnel a pair of big orange lips beckon to a hummingbird, Kiss me, baby. The hummingbird beak penetrates the funnel to the nectar the flower reserves for hummingbird alone.

All the world immediately around my observation point is still. A wall of thunder just now rose in the south and goes on rumbling from what sounds like Yadkin County to Wilkes County. The tin roof overhead sounds the new wave of sprinkling rain. An Air Force (I suppose) jet added its own thunder momentarily to the soundscape of soft rain on tin roof and murmurs of distant thunder echoing around in the landscape and the cloud canyons in the sky above the weather.

I decided to set up out here on the porch to listen to the rain and the water rushing over rocks in Spring Lizard Creek. The landscape is most beautiful to me in soft light and wet. The rain gives the illusion that the landscape of mountain laurel, apple tree, mountain dogwood, rhododendron, spruce pine, Joe Pye, jewelweed, the hummingbird, is painted on silk by a master painter of Japanese screens.

In '91 I had the good fortune to see a show at the British Museum of some rather large Japanese screens from the early 20th Century when the art of the Western world was beginning to influence Eastern art. It seared a permanent place in my memory of perhaps the most beautiful man-made objects I'd ever, before or since, laid eyes upon. It's at moments like this that I see in the phenomenal world, right here at home where I live, the model for the most beautiful paintings I've ever beheld.

I can't get out of my mind that it's a good time to leave here for a few minutes to drive down the mountain to take fresh water and hay to Molly the horse before more lightning comes. I'd hoped the rain would take a break and I could drive down to where she's penned without getting wet. I'll just go in the rain.

Molly is a paint with patches of brown and black on white, like on a dog, and has a quick mind. We're a little bit acquainted. Earlier, I would reach out to touch her and she'd shy away from my hand. This evening, after half a bucket of water and the taste of some new hay, she walked over to where I was leaning against the wooden fence talking to her.

She snorted that guttural snort characteristic of horses when I asked her if she's lonesome. She stepped over to me, I reached out to touch her and she moved her head to avoid my hand. I figured she didn't want to be touched, so OK, whatever, horse doesn't want to be touched. I live with three cats. I know about doesn't-want-to-be-touched. No problema. I stood still and let Molly's double-tubed vacuum cleaner nose go over my arms and hands, both sides, and my face thoroughly. She was getting acquainted, finding out what I smell like, where I've been.

She recognizes the truck and Aster as well as me now, such that she whinnied when I drove up, though the whinny was for food, not because I smell so good.

I realized that her nose was sweeping over my exposed skin like she was vacuuming a carpet because she wanted my scent in her memory. It felt like being read by a psychic.

All the four-leggeds use smell to back up sight. Scent is the password. Now Molly has my scent associated with the human that feeds, waters and talks to her sometimes. She knows I'm friends with Cowboy the watchdog from his scent on my hands and that he walks around with me instead of growling and attacking me.

The rain has given out, the air is refreshing back here on the porch. Took a few more photos of compositions I noticed while gazing all over the landscape looking for the next sentence or word. Good Golly Miss Molly plays on the 45rpm jukebox in my head. It starts up every time I see Molly.

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