Rainy day

It's so rare that we have a rainy day here that it took some effort to dig out raingear for everyone—and there was some relief to discover that we actually do own raincoats for both kids (hooray for hand-me-downs).

Nora looked at her raincoat as a total novelty and asked repeatedly, "What's this thing called, Mommy?" She asked the same thing about her tights: "These are like socks? But they also are like pants?"

Every so often I think I'd like to move to a lusher climate (usually when I'm experiencing garden or ocean envy). But it just takes one gloomy day like this to remind me how much I love our 300+ days of sunshine a year.

Unfortunately it looks like this rain might bring with it the season's first frost, so I'm frantically scouring garden websites to determine what needs to be pulled from the vine today and what can stay. The tomatoes and peppers are coming in, but I'm not sure about the beans, which I've been leaving on to dry. Feel free to weigh in.