The shifting orange and red mass on my phone’s weather app crawled menacingly closer to the pulsing blue dot that marked our place on the map of those areas doomed by the approaching band of storms. The description was grim: 60mph wind gusts, quarter-sized hail, power outages and downed tree limbs, take shelter immediately.

I headed outside to hang a load of laundry.

We had decided to come straight home after the market instead of meandering around the city, warm containers of phad Thai carryout in hand, having our usual post-market date. The weather guessers kept changing their predictions throughout the morning, pushing the expected storms from early evening back to late morning, then to maybe mid-afternoon. What did they care? They wouldn’t have to wrestle a 10’ canopy into a soggy ripstop nylon carrying case and heft folding tables into the back of a pick-up truck between showers. Patrick made fun and casual conversation with our customers, offering odds on when the day’s fortunes would shift from dry to wet. While several insisted the storms would arrive at three p.m., he held fast to the hour of five o’clock, dismissing the little cloud-with-rain icon next to 11 a.m. time slot on the app’s hourly tracking display. We packed up at noon under hazy skies, dug a bag of vanilla chai granola from one of the totes for a last-minute customer and pointed the truck toward home. Fifteen miles out, Patrick announced he was going to cut the grass.

I hope it’s not arrogant of us to test the grand and natural scheme of things with our piddly little household and land chores. We have no misconceptions about Who is in charge of such things and arrange our work accordingly. With our heads bowed, we try to think of it as planning ahead while living a bit close to the edge, where sensible meets reckless. We can hang laundry inside, thanks to a retractable clothesline installed in the upstairs guestroom, but the hot sun and increasingly strong winds almost begged to help dry and iron the clothes we would wear to work in the week ahead. I couldn’t resist as I kept one eye on the kitchen clock and the other on the skies. Storms have skirted around us before; anything was possible. In the distance, I heard the mower slicing an even three inches off the walking paths and open field east of the ridge. Patrick was having a ball.

Laundry hung and blowing parallel to the ground, I took a seat in one of our green reproduction vintage metal lawn chairs on the front porch just under the overhang to watch the unfolding show. Thick, dark gray clouds from the southwest were swallowing the blue skies in great gulps and I could see the silver backs of every leaf on the cottonwoods that stood in their creek bank sentry positions. Just a few hours ago we were on a patch of hot asphalt, handing out samples and wiping our brows between sales (in one exciting moment, a gust of wind slid our canopy, sand weights and all, a good six inches across the parking lot and nearly into the neighboring artisan cheese vendor’s stand; Patrick grabbed the canopy’s metal framing overhead as two market patrons passing by ran to steady the metal poles. See? People are still good and want to help). Unmoving and peaceful now in my perch on the deck, I closed my eyes as a sister wind mussied my hair, thunder rolling and rumbling in the distance. The droning of the mower’s motor was fading as Patrick cut deeper into the meadow and toward the fields near the woods.

When I moved from my chair to the deck’s wooden steps so I could put my bare feet on the freshly cut grass, I felt the tiniest of raindrops land on my arms. An hour had passed since I hung the laundry; might be wise to check it, but no rush. Warm spring days are meant to be savored. I strolled leisurely past the flowerbed in front of the living room windows on my way to the clothesline behind the house, noticing that the bleeding hearts were finishing up their sweet pink and white blooms for the year and the bloodroots beneath the maple had no intention of going anywhere soon. More drops of rain. I took my time plucking the damp clothes from the line, balanced the wicker basket on my hip and headed upstairs in complete disobedience to the “touch nothing twice” rule of work efficiency. Most of the clothes were in dry and foldable condition (thank you, Wind and Sun).

I found my place back in that metal chair on the front deck as flashes of lightning lit up an ever-darkening sky. The sound of the mower grew slightly but not reassuringly closer as the rain increased, filling in the dry patches on the wooden planks. Patrick cuts the grass will full ear protection over ear buds that deliver one of his favorite podcasts or playlists. I’m sure he could feel the rain on his bare forearms but wasn’t confident that he heard the thunder or noticed the lightning. One large BOOM! later, and the sound of the mower grew louder as Patrick came quickly into view from around the back of the house, racing (responsibly) toward the open door of the barn. He made it to the shelter of the deck just as the skies opened up, drenching the grass clippings and launching the cats from their hidden positions in the weeds beneath the bird feeders. Before we could comment, three cracks of lightning punched the sky with simultaneous cannon shots of thunder. If the windows had shattered, we wouldn’t have been surprised.

The hands of the kitchen wall clock sat comfortably at 4:45pm.

Well played, Patrick. Well played.