Someone left the duck out in the rain

Rosemary and Patrick being ducks

I've been waiting for weeks to make a MacArthur Park reference on this blog (and, sadly, that title was my best effort). Our ducks love the weather (although they do seem terrified of my umbrella, making it difficult to take this picture). The chickens seem pretty miserable, and the dogs refuse to leave the front door to go on a walk. I'm certainly not complaining, but the rain is hindering my garden blogging this morning.

That said, it is Tuesday. I can't exactly recommend a gardening cocktail for such a morning, but tropical weather calls for a tropical cocktail, even if you're just blogging and not gardening. I think a nice, simple gin and tonic fits the bill for this sort of muggy, rainy weather. I'm not going to bother with a photograph of a gin and tonic for you all today. If you really need to know what one looks like, take a look back at the Tuesday Morning Gardening Cocktail from Heatwave Tuesday a couple of weeks ago.

The apparent incoherence of recommending the same drink for hot, dry weather two weeks ago and the soggy weather of today is not lost on me. I am sorry if that sort of thing bothers you, but you'll just have to learn to deal with it. Life is full of such paradoxes.

I'm not lying. It really is raining this morning,

but no raindrops hit the surface of the water in the

1/10th of a second when the shutter of the camera opened.

Despite not being able to actually garden, I managed to get some decent garden-oriented pictures this morning in the rain. I was trying to capture the outward-expanding rings of waves on the surface of the not-good-enough-for-the-ducks pond. That is easier said than done, however. Still, I think this picture of the lily pads with an unopened lily looks pretty good.


And, because I can't go more than a few days without posting a picture of a morning glory, I have captured this stunning image of a wet morning glory. I like morning glories and all, but the main reason I seem obsessed with them is that they are pretty much overtaking my entire backyard. I have to untangle them from the Knock-out Rose, the lost tomatoes, and the olive tree almost every morning.

So pretty and so bent on world-wide domination