~from Ami
I drove to Tahlequah, OK in the rain today to do research for a Cherokee restaurant I'm profiling for a magazine. It's been bone dry here in NE Oklahoma for well over a month, so the storms were perfect, soaking the rust-and-black colored chickweed and crabgrass growing along the highway.

The leaves are beginning to change, some already dropping from the heat to cover the fields and hills with a carpet of yellow and red and burnt orange. Tahlequah is a tree-covered college town, where the names on the street signs are written in both English and Cherokee.

We joked about the overuse of the name "Cherokee" on business storefronts, where even "Cherokee Pest Control" is made to sound like a tribal affiliation. I scribbled on a legal pad in the middle of the loud restaurant, where the windows steamed against the rain outside.

By the time we came home, the house was cool and quiet. A light sprinkle was falling on the dried-out sage and rosemary outside the back door.

I don't have time for much of anything these days, and didn't see how I could squeeze another non-fiction assignment into the deadlines I'm working against- but the unexpected rain has reminded me of the rejuvenation that comes after a dry spell. The herbs I've neglected all summer still give off a powerful fragrance with the weight of the storm over them.