It was such an impressive cloudburst this afternoon that I stopped whatever I was doing (I'd like to say working, but you wouldn't believe me) and just watched. Watched and listened, because it was the loudest rainstorm we've had in a long time.

I looked at the garden, with the birdbath filling up and the places where I pulled out the weeds turning to mud. I watched out the back door, with the bird feeder dripping and the porch overhang rattling. I checked out the side yard, where the wooden fence showed its age even more than usual as it darkened to reveal cracks and knots.

I climbed up into the loft, where I could see the fields beyond my property and the road shining slate-gray under the watery assault. The driveway that I'd walked on to get the mail half an hour before was now flowing like a river. The scene was like something out of Angela's Ashes, the wettest movie I've ever seen.

The storm came and went quickly. It took as long for the roof gutters to stop flowing as it did for the heavy rain to come and go. For a few minutes it was calm, and then a steady, more silent rain began too fall. This was the kind that really soaks everything beneath it. It will keep the fields green for a while longer, as it encourages the plants, including the weeds, to grow even higher.

There were more showers to come, but the trend was toward lightness. All of this interesting weather lasted almost exactly an hour. By 4:30, the gutters were still dripping but the sun was trying mightily to force itself through the storm clouds.

This could be one of the last blasts of winter, or the sign of a wet spring. This kind of day would depress me more in November, when I know what's coming, than it does on the last day of April. Taking the days one at a time makes more sense now than it did then. Nobody knows what May will bring.