Off topic but do you have a resource for your second paragraph? I find this etymology fascinating!

Not sure if this is what you had in mind, but, for example:

rain - https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/雨

field - https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/田

thunder - https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/雷

rice - https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/稲

wife - https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/妻

lightning - http://nihongo.monash.edu/cgi-bin/wwwjdic?1MDJ%B0%F0%BA%CA

Those would probably be more helpful as Wiktionary links:

rain - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/雨

field - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/田

thunder - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/雷

Note that the "glyph origin" section describes 雷 as an ancient simplification of the phono-semantic compound 靁, where 畾 indicates the pronunciation. Any relation to rice paddies is probably a post-hoc rationalization.

rice - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/稲

wife - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/妻

lightning - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/稲妻

This is actually common, folks think Kanji are random strokes, but they tell stories and tend to make sense. Understanding the relations makes it easy to remember.