So, after yesterday’s post, and responses from Twitter, Facebook and comments here, I can add some other reasons to love the rain:

11. The smells you get after rain. Lots of people mentioned this one, and I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t… especially when I walked through the garden yesterday afternoon and was ambushed by that honest, earthy, promising smell.

12. The fact that there’s a word for the smell of the earth after rain. I didn’t know this, but Rachel and Lou did. (I know Rachel and Lou on the physical plane, and this doesn’t surprise me a bit.). The word is ‘petrichor’.

13. I’d thought about the joy of watching a small child jump in a puddle: I hadn’t considered what a life-saver jumping in puddles is, for a family with small people who have been cooped up in bad weather. Natalie’s family has a name for this: ‘puddle hunting’.

14. Sarah mentioned the way spiderwebs look, and that sparked a very clear memory for me. I was a child, I was (I think) on one of those Sunday-afternoon walks that, when you’re a child, it seems puzzling that the grown-ups are so very keen on. And there was a fence – I suppose I must have been about eye-level with it – stretching away into the distance, and it was covered in spiderwebs, and they were all glistening and gleaming.

15. So, let’s add, rainy days spark old memories that make you smile.

16. And then, there’s the whole washed-cleanness of everything, afterwards.

It’s beautiful, here, today. I may go spiderweb-hunting.