Bulbous, heavy clouds split wide open yesterday, just after I climbed down from Randy Rivere’s tractor and left his sugar cane field. (ah, but that’s a story I’ll save for another day…) In the 24 hours since then, it has poured unabated, in a way that makes you forget that sunshine ever existed. Thunder builds again in the distance, rolling toward me, flattening the air as it comes, until it presses down on my little cottage. I huddle into my jacket and cradle a cup of dark chicory coffee, inhaling its woody scent. Enormous, shimmering leaves reach onto the porch and flap in the wind like elephant’s ears, while everything else dances like a scene from Fantasia.