I just love the sound of rain falling on canopies – leaf or shingle. It puts me in a contemplative mood.

Maybe because I recently watched Interstellar, maybe because I caught a clip of NOVA’s Alien Planets Revealed this week . . .

When I looked out the open window last night around bedtime, out into the darkness scented by the gentle rain that had just begun to fall with a pattering sound on the broad leaves of the plants in the flowerbed, I was suddenly transported with wonder.

Such a strange place, this, where life depends on a liquid that falls from the sky at irregular intervals.