Blogger's Note: the following is not a sponsored post.

I always assumed that the raisin commercials about "grapes and sunshine" were nothing but clever marketing ploys. Then I watched the morning news yesterday. There's a storm front moving in. Finally, after months of dryness there will be a serious rain. Maybe more than one. Water from heaven to drown my parched soul. I didn't think at first about the crops and farmers around here.

There's a small town/city/community south of Fresno called Raisin City. I've not been there, but usually around when I'm seeing the signs for it I'm also seeing field after field (vineyard after vineyard?) of grapes. A few weeks ago I started seeing that between the rows of vines there were long paths of some sort of brown stuff laid out. Those are raisins in the making. After the grapes come off the vines they get laid on these monster rolls of brown paper right there in the fields to dry. It really is just grapes and sunshine. The news segment talked with one of these farmers, and they need nearly another week of warm sunny weather to make sure these grapes finish drying. If they box them too early it's more likely to have spoilage issues.

Now the almond crops and the cotton crops should survive the rain well, as long as the cotton doesn't get all muddy from wind and rain. But the raisins will not do well. Makes me almost ashamed of wanting the rain so badly. Almost. Not enough, however, to go against that double joy in knowing that the Sunmaid Raisin Lady didn't lie in her commercial and that there will soon be rain to wash the summer dust off our homes.