I had a plan to be at the studio today. It's been a busy week, what with Monday Victoria Day, Tuesday our weekly expedition to the water, Wednesday hosting the great adventure of a bus ride downtown and a jazz concert for an auditorium full of bopping preschoolers…and work, and small boy coming down with a cold. And the rain. Two days ago it started to rain, softly. Yesterday it rained. Today it rained, steadily and with purpose.

I like being at the studio on rainy days, listening to the water on the roof and against the window. There's something about the sensation of being weathered in, about being snug against the elements, in my own space where there's plenty to do and none of the household or day-job-related chores hanging over my head. I putter. I get little things done. I tidy. And then, all things ship-shape, I settle into the real work of painting.

But instead I kept small sniffly boy with me and we ran errands: rubber boots for both of us, after he wore through his soles in a month, insisting on braking his bike with his green froggie boots; rain jackets and warm fleece sweaters for camping this summer. We ate pasta and parmesan cheese. We fed the neighbors' cat. We drove along the water, swollen and brown, almost-but-not-quite spilling onto the trees along its bank. And we talked about bikes and tickling and finding the echo in the shopping mall, and how lucky we are to live on a hill between two rivers.

We made our garden rounds, everything wet, soaking our legs to the knees. The fruit trees are blooming along the alley, though the surveyors were working there and I fear I've made my last harvest from the beautiful old crabapple that has kept my family in juice and jelly for so many years. The clematis that shades the front door from the low evening sun is budding; abundantly this year, after failing to flower the last two.

And still, it's raining.