As a native New Englander I love weather and everything about it. If there’s one thing I miss the most about Massachusetts (besides family and friends, of course) it’s weather. Now one person’s long stretch of blue skies and predictable conditions as we have here in the Valley of the Sun is as much weather as a New Englander’s “if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute” kind of thing. Weather or not, it’s still weather.

One of the things you get used to out here in the Valley is the fact you can make a tee-time weeks or months in advance and be nearly certain you’re going to play. No checking the local news every night at 6 or 11 as your golf day approaches to see if you’re actually going to play – even in the months of December and January, when we get our wet-weather systems blowing in from California, the chances of hitting a bona fide washout are pretty slim. That’s a nice convenience, to be sure.

Tonight it’s raining here following a day when there was actually weather as weather to actually see and enjoy. The morning started off sunny with just a few high clouds. Walking outside at noon to greet the UPS guy delivering a couple of Callaway fairway woods (more on that in a later post) the day was lovely and tranquil, a warm sun still shining through a sheen of cloud cover that looked like it was shining through one of those heavy plastic tarps you stretch across the floor when painting a room. It was really lovely; it was all I could do to head out to the back patio and take a much-needed nap.

By early afternoon, I could hear the gate to the side yard just to the left of my home office starting to rattle, so I looked up from my laptop to see the lime tree branches starting to rustle under a now fully-clouded sky. Back east in October it’s leaves that fall; in front of my office window in December it’s limes that fall. Their once healthy-green color now turned to a sickly gree-yellow, yellow, or even brown, I can hear a little thud whenever one falls to the ground. Taking a quick walk outside between client calls, the soft warmth of just a couple of hours ago has been replaced by a cooler breeze. Looking to the south and west, the gray clouds are looking darker and a little more heralding of the rain I see on the Accuweather site just west of the Arizona border.

I like the various sounds the wind makes. During my daily afternoon walk I hear the sound of the few leafy trees there are on our street rustling in the breeze. Next to the sound of thunder in the distance on a still summer afternoon, or waves at the seashore, or rain falling on pavement, I think wind in the trees is a sound I never get tired of. To me it’s the sound of the breath of God moving across Creation. We also have the wind chimes out back and a couple metal art work thingys (a couple of suns and a small “It’s Five o’Clock Somewhere” sign from Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville store) hanging outside that tinkle and bang against the house whenever it’s windy. It’s all very relaxing to my ears.

There’s one sound associated with wind I don’t miss, and that’s the sound of sleet hitting the window at 4 AM on a workday; that means getting up earlier, scraping your car, and a hell commute into work.

Tonight we have had periods of steady rain – welcome news to the Valley where the last time we had any rain was the first week of September. Funny how the rain presents itself when you’re sitting on the back patio: you hear splashes in the swimming pool and can see the drops reflected in the landscape lights. Pretty nice.