Oooh, shiny

At this time of year, if I look up out of the kitchen window I'll often see a honey-eater vigorously digging for nectar in the bowels of one of the sublimely surreal blossoms on the passionfruit vine (I never get any fruit, which I now know from my friend S the master (mistress?) gardener, is because the rootstock has died) but it's a pretty covering for the galvo fence so I haven't pulled it out.

But today what caught my eye was the sparkle of water on the leaves after last night's rain. Actually it didn't just 'rain', it bucketed down like the wrath of God, which in itself was quite good fun -- I'd been to the opera with my friend D's daughter, now nineteen and soaking up experience of all kinds like a sponge, and as I drove her home the heavens cracked open with son et lumière thunder-and-lightning, culminating in a blinding flash directly overhead as we drove through some rather scary rain down Adelaide's main street, thick with Saturday night traffic, and knocked out all the street lights on the spot.

The opera was Nabucco, itself full of Sturm and Drang and more of which – I hope – shortly, so the weather really just felt like a continuation of the show. This morning it became clear to me that it had also been bucketing down here at my place, and had flooded both the laundry and the garage.

But who cares? Every single thing in the garden is sitting up smiling with its ears cocked like a Border Collie. The Roma tomatoes are visibly bigger than they were yesterday afternoon and I swear the mint has grown half an inch in all directions overnight.