Quintessential Maine summer days, profuse with sun and color, reward us after winter's endless snow and spring's teasing awakening.  Without sun, however, summer still evokes our senses--fragrant, dewy peonies, sticky salt sea breezes, sweet berries, and an abundance of sound, from a canoe slapping the water to rain gushing from the gutters.  Even in the rain, we can hear summer with thrushes singing, mosquitoes whining, and frogs creating a symphony.

Frog music in the rain makes Maine sound like a rainforest.  We can hear rain splash through the lush trees.  In the distance, a Bullfrog competes with the farmer's bull for more resonant bass notes, while melodious Gray Treefrogs serenade us from the woods and Green frogs pluck their banjos in our water garden.

Rain intensifies other musical experiences as well.  One of my favorite summer memories takes me back twenty-four years to the top of Mount Blue where my husband and I were among about one hundred people listening to Schooner Fare in the rain.  Usually the vista awed us, but, on this day, it was the colorful umbrellas bobbing against the rain-muted mountains that captured our attention, as rich male voices filled the western mountains with Maine folksongs.

Many feel that Maine's rainy Summer of '09 does not "rock," but there is a blessing in the rain.  Without the sun to clarify the grand view, colors deepen in the rain, smells linger, and, most of all, sounds carry…sounds like that of a frog singing its heart out as it clings to a tree or a folk group's rousing rendition of "Portland Town."  These are among Maine's summer rain-drenched musical moments that have sustained us through the silence of winter.