Are you a Pluviophile?

“Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.” John Ruskin
 
I am a Pluviophile.  Do you know what a pluviophile is?  It is a lover of rain.  I live in the desert southwest and we average about 11-12 inches of rain per year.  So rain brings joy to my heart.  I love it and so do the plants – we have had a good monsoon and our mountains are lush and green.  Today we are having a gentle rain and it is calming and peaceful.  Typically in the summer we have monsoons and we receive a lot of rain in a short amount of time, but today and I am grateful for the soft and tender rain.
 
As a pluviophile, I delight in the smell of rain.  I love it when I go outside prior to a rainstorm and get a whiff of that beautiful fragrance of approaching rain.  I am not big on perfumes, but I would use the smell of rain or request it as a fragrance for my car if it could be bottled.  I revel being outside in the rain.  I took my cup of coffee outside and sat in my chair under the porch and watched the rain hit the plants and the droplets glistened on the stems.  I enjoyed seeing how the water drops formed and rippled out on the flagstone and admired the beauty of each raindrop.  We are fortunate in Tucson to have stunning blue skies, but the grayness of a rainy day is dramatic in another way – everything appears softer and fills me with a sense of peace. Pluviophiles also love the sound of rain.  Listening to water in its many forms brings me joy.  Today, I have treasured hearing the sound of rain on my new roof and the sound as it hits the ground.  There is no need for music on rainy days for rain is a primordial sound and I appreciate the changes in rhythm and tempo as the intensity of the rain changes.
 
Today is a perfect day with the gentle rain, but every day is a perfect day when you live in the present moment.  There are many kinds of weather and I appreciate each kind for what it offers. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow states, “The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain.” May you find peace and joy in each day no matter what type of weather.
 
Are you a pluviophile?  What do you like best about rain?