These days we’re seeing a whole lot of this:

The typical June brings about 5 inches of rain around here; so far we’ve gotten almost 3 inches and more are on the way, thanks to a Caribbean visitor named Bill. May was so wet that not even two weeks of sunshine was enough to dry out the earth, so keep your eyes peeled for flash flooding today and tomorrow, especially around rivers and streams.

Here in town, the rain’s effects have been beautiful, nerve-wracking and occasionally weird.

This past Saturday, a woman named Meredith and her bridesmaids, family and imminent family-in-law crowded into Fayetteville’s Salon on the Square to get gussied up for an evening wedding. The place is in a beautiful old building with tin ceiling panels and honey-colored wood — I’ve wanted to get some images in there for a while. The energy of weddings (and wedding prep) is always good photo material, too. Lots of laughing, lots of color and lots of hairspray.

Every few minutes one of us would glance out the front door to see what kind of rain was falling at the moment. Weather wasn’t their friend this day; 12 dry days would break Saturday with two or three fast and heavy downpours. The wedding was supposed to be outside.

I don’t know where the wedding wound up, but I imagine (and hope), after agitated phone calls, a few quick changes of plans and other hallmarks of every wedding day, it turned out OK.

The rain let up the next day, so I spent some time exploring parts of Fayetteville I hadn’t seen before.

That brings me to the weird. Each night, a herd of small animals ambles onto the patios and sidewalks of my apartment complex. They’ve been around all summer, but all of the water seems to have helped their numbers.

When I first saw them, I nicknamed them leopard slugs because of those spots; turns out that’s their real name. Anywhere from less than an inch to 6 inches long, they trundle across the pavement all night at a few inches per minute, munching on whatever organic material they encounter. Slugs seem like absurd creatures to me — they’re not going to outrun anything, and they’re nothing but soft morsels for anything large enough to try. But still they mosey through their quiet lives every night as the rain falls.

(I didn’t make it do this, and I really wonder why it was twisting and rearing up. It seemed fine a minute later.)

Stay dry out there, and thanks for looking.

Dan