Mother nature has been stingy this spring and brought us rain full days keeping us indoors and scurrying to our cars from work to home. The damp has corroded our hips and knees, and stiffened our spines. We anticipate warm sunny days to relieve our dark humor, to remove our scowls and add highlights to our hair. Any sunny periods take us by surprise, catch us unprepared without to-do lists or packed picnic hampers [not wicker like in Austin’s time, but polyester and micro-fiber outer shells with keep-cool lining]. Rain pounds the roadways and sidewalks — it is all that I have heard for weeks. All nearby ponds are pushing at their banks replenished after previous drought-full summers. New England springs tend to supply farmers and lawn & garden enthusiasts with a plentiful amount of rain to start their summer growing season off on the right foot, but after three months of rain our fields and front yards are too wet to allow planting. On the other hand, as inhabitants of this corner of our country and duly cognizant of the fickleness of our weather patterns, we just might be praying for rain by mid-August.