Storms and Showers of July: Rossetti, Frost, and Summer Rain

July 1, 2020

On this day in high summer, the garden seems to shimmer with an energy all its own—half sun, half storm.

July never arrives quietly; she sweeps in wearing blazing skirts, tossing lightning from one horizon to the other. The air thickens, the soil steams, and even the plants breathe in shorter bursts, as though waiting for the next great, rain-soaked sigh of relief.

Christina Rossetti, ever attuned to the moods of nature, begins our reflection on this tempestuous month with the simplest observation:

In scorched July
The storm-clouds fly.
— Christina Georgina Rossetti, English poet, The Months

Her line rushes past like a gust of wind before rain—brief, hot, and full of promise.

Indeed, July is a month of contradiction: parched mornings that end in downpours, still air broken by thunder’s drum. John Ray, the old English naturalist, put his trust in an ancient bit of farmhouse wisdom:

If the first of July be rainy weather,
It will rain, more or less, for four weeks together.
— John Ray, English naturalist and writer, English Proverbs

Every gardener knows the truth of this proverb.

The first storm of the month often sets the tone for all that follows—a fickle forecast written in clouds and mud.

Yet when those longed-for showers do come, they bring the most delicious of sensory rewards: that unmistakable perfume of rain meeting hot earth.

Raymond A. Foss captures that renewal perfectly in his ode to the summer storm:

A break in the heat
away from the front
no thunder, no lightning,
just rain, warm rain
falling near dusk
falling on eager ground
steaming blacktop
hungry plants
Thirsty
turning toward the clouds
cooling, soothing rain
splashing in sudden puddles
catching in open screens
that certain smell
of summer rain.
— Raymond A. Foss, American poet, Summer Rain

Reading those lines, one can almost hear the sigh of the parched hydrangea, the rustle of lilies lifting their faces to drink. Rain, when it finally comes in July, feels personal.

It is not just water—it is reprieve, restoration, and forgiveness all in one.

Robert Frost, with his typical sharpness, hears the conversation of the elements themselves.

In “Lodged,” he shows the violence and aftermath of the storm—a gardener’s heartbreak written in bent stems and battered blooms:

The rain to the wind said,
'You push, and I'll pelt.'
They so smote the garden bed
That the flowers actually knelt,
And lay lodged--though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.
— Robert Frost, American poet, Lodged

Few lines strike the gardener’s heart more deeply.

We know what it means to be “lodged”—flattened by life, yet still rooted, still alive. Like the flowers, we rise again once the storm has passed and the sun returns with gentler warmth.

And at last, Sara Coleridge offers us a softer image of July—the month’s fiery temperament tempered by its gifts:

Hot July brings cooling showers,
Apricots, and gillyflowers.
— Sara Coleridge, English author, The Garden Year

The rains, she reminds us, are more than destruction—they are the nourishment that brings forth sweetness and scent.

How lovely her mention of gillyflowers, that poetic, old-fashioned term.

Once used to describe members of the mustard family, the word could mean wallflowers, carnations, or clove pinks, even white stock. Its root lies in the ancient word for clove—a spice of warmth and luxury—hinting at July’s deep, spicy heart under all that heat.

So let the storms rage and the petals bow.

July demands our attention, our patience, our awe. It is a month that scalds and soothes, burns and blesses.

And when the rain falls at last, it carries the garden’s collective exhale: relief, renewal, and the faint, sacred fragrance of life beginning again beneath the thunder’s applause.