"It's another lovely day," the neighbour on the road says as we walk by each other in the cool, early morning air.

"It is," I agree. Then, out loud or in my head, I add, "We could use rain."

It has been dry here since late June. Things I put in the ground this year get watered almost every day. The lilac, rose of sharon, and cedar that I put in last year have to make do, but the annuals and the juniper that I planted this year need help. And because I grow my vegetables and greens in pots, these get watered every day, with the ones in bright sun needing an extra drink in the mid-afternoon.

The shrubs that have been here for a long time have done okay. The cedars by the driveway, however, started to show signs of stress early in summer. A few leaves turned brown. By mid-July, the maples showed they were suffering. I would find a little groups of leaves, green and on the ground. The tree had cut off the small branch. By late July, I found a few larger branches with twenty leaves. The end of the branch was brown and dead. The tree was protecting against more moisture loss.

We did finally get a millimeter of rain, then a couple. But on those high humidity days, when nights did not cool off, there wasn't even dew. Eventually, the humidity had to break. A couple times, radar showed storms north and south of us. We stayed dry. On a Sunday, there were lots of clouds on the radar, and we got a splash in the early afternoon with five minutes of light rain around supper time. Shopping in town a couple days later, someone told me that it had rained all day in Owen Sound. I was envious.

Finally, as August began, we had a day of rain that included downpours. A few days later, another heavy rain. I did not water at all for a few days. Then, with bright sun, things in pots and raised beds needed to be watered. Anything in the ground went a few days without extra watering.

The thing is, the streams along the road are bone dry. These streams are not spring fed. Water slips through the cracks in the limestone of the escarpment to flow down these channels to the bay. But all the rain we've had has been absorbed by the shallow top soil or been taken up by the trees. The days it was raining, there was a bit of flow in the streams and down the driveways. But most of what fell was absorbed by thirsty ground and plants.

So, last week at an outdoor Tai Chi class, someone said it was a lovely day. I agreed. Then, I said out loud that we could use rain. The speaker turned around amazed. "What!" they said. "We got drowned."

Maybe they got more than we did. And even here, there was a day or two when water lay in the swampy areas west of the road. Now there is not a puddle to be found. And on the paths one level up the escarpment, the clay is still hard and cracked.

It won't take much to replenish the soil on top of the escarpment once fall rains do come. The layer of top soil there is not very thick. It does not take a lot of moisture to saturate that ground. But back from the escarpment and below, more rain will be needed to replenish the ground and feed the trees before they go dormant this fall.

During a dreary, rainy summer, I have echoed the sentiments of others: we need some sunny days. But most years we farmed, I was aware of the cost of weeks of dry weather. Our first crop of hay was always decent, fed by winter snows and spring rains (though there was one year not long ago when the thin covering of snow was a warning of the drought to come). But once the first crop of hay was off, we needed rain, or the valuable second crop would not come. And grain would not fill out. Most summers, I waited for rain. As I am doing this August.

Cathy Hird lives on the traditional territory of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation