The Rain in Spain…

…falls mainly on the plain, as we know. The rain in southern Belize falls nightly over pretty much everything.  The dry season down here began during March and ended at the beginning of June.

In northern climes the deciduous trees drop their leaves to protect themselves during the cold winters.  In the tropics they drop their leaves to prevent evaporation during the dry season. For those three months there are plenty of bare trees and branches although other species put on their new growth during this parched season. The ground cracks and the grass turns purple and then brown.  Even during the dry there are occasional showers to relieve the heat but nothing beats the relief when real rain starts falling.

Early morning shower

But when it starts falling is the interesting thing; because just as it was decreed in Camelot: “The rain may never fall till after sundown, By eight in the morning fog must disappear, In short, there’s simply not, A more congenial spot, for happyeveraftering than here in Camelot.” When Alan Lerner wrote this in 1960 he might have been thinking about Toledo where by far the most rain falls at night.  The gods might crash and bang and hurl their lightning bolts all night long but by six in the morning the wind will die, the rain eases and the sun comes out while the world goes about its business as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

And as one of our visitors said.  “What they don’t tell you about the rainforest is when it isn’t raining the sun shines.” It is shining right now so I will escape from this computer and enjoy it.