Rain at last

The first day of rain is a happy day. To truly understand why, let me introduce you to the view from our house for most of this month, a fire a day, from one hill to the next, until the sky was thick with smoke, and the sun set red behind clouds of ashes. The hills around Ouro Preto have all caught fire, including ours, and many of them burned down to ashes. It was a sad and unhealthy month of October this one, as the skies did not seem to ever want to launch this year's rainy season.

And finally today, the first proper rain finally came, the one that starts before we get out of bed and goes on until the next, or almost, and it was a happy one. We found a few dry frogs in the past few months, and today they are loud out there, along with the gigantic snails that graze by the dozen the plot around our house.

Leila, Coline and I put on our boots as the sun came out just before setting and found out how much has already grown. We had a feast with the first few pitangas, jabuticabas, raspberries (going fat and strong this month even though this one magic plant has not stopped giving fruits since last year, literally) and (juicy) wild strawberries. And for the first all-indoors day, we dug out many forgotten ways to spend some time together out of the pula-pula, which included recycling wax crayons, making our favorite pancakes, reading tens of children's books, hugging, watching She-Ra on youtube (the girls and Cris) while knitting (me), tea and hot chocolate (separate), paint and drawing on some treasured scratchboard cards and all these little things that happen in 5 min or less and make a full day of being at home active and lazy at the same time, a rainy sunnyday as Coline puts it.