Showering in the Rain
Showering in the Rain
One of the things we’ve discovered with our outdoor shower is that it is surprisingly pleasant to take a shower in the rain. At night in the rain is usually the best — the rising steam and dripping plants create a wonderful tropical ambience — but daytime is better now while the wisteria is blooming. It feels quite decadent to shampoo your hair with a bunch of wisteria flowers hanging five inches from your face.
Wisteria Shower Curtain
Our wisteria is the Japanese one, Wisteria floribunda, which has longer, more fragrant bloom clusters that open more gradually over a longer period than the more common Chinese wisteria, Wisteria sinensis. It doesn’t give us the dramatic every-flower-open-at-once photos of the Chinese, but it gives us a longer season of showers, which is more valuable to us. Today’s rainy showers are at the start of its peak. Pretty soon the flowers will be getting stuck to us while we shower.
Pandorea Flowers
One of the other vines in our garden is a Pandorea pandorana. It’s overhead on a trellis, screening us from our neighbor’s second story windows, and we probably don’t appreciate it as much as we should. I knew it was blooming but didn’t pay much attention until this recent storm when it dropped hundreds of flowers on the little side patio that it shades. Not as nice as some fallen flowers can be, but still one heck of a lot of flowers.
This entry was posted on Sunday, April 11th, 2010 at 6:43 pm and is filed under plants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 11th, 2010 at 9:24 pm
I can only imagine what it would be like to take a shower outdoors while it is raining. Oh well, a girl can dream I guess….
April 11th, 2010 at 10:56 pm
I can see how that wouldn’t be too common in Arizona…
April 12th, 2010 at 6:50 am
That’s so beautiful, but I do think temps are a little milder where you are then here. We usually take an umbrella to the hot tub when it rains — too cold from above otherwise.
April 15th, 2010 at 8:56 pm
I’m always jealous of the wisteria shower. If I ever buy a house I’ll be sure to put one in.
December 18th, 2010 at 1:31 pm
It’s gently raining here and surprisingly warm. I was reminded of your post and had to revisit. I hope you add a little more detail about this wonderful outdoor shower, like what’s used for the walls and floor.
December 18th, 2010 at 2:28 pm
That’s funny, this storm is the first one I’ve showered in this winter, and it was a good one for showering in.
Our shower is just a nozzle head on one of the posts at the corner of the trellis over our porch. There are no walls and the floor is just the boards at the corner of the deck, so the water runs off to the ground where the Spicebush roots suck it up. We’ve talked about making a better floor so that the wood will last longer, but we’ve never done it. The wisteria overhead on the trellis, a bamboo on the porch, and the big spicebush planted beside the porch are the elements which make it so nice.