A soft day

In Ireland, a soft day brings a muted mistiness to the landscape, a pattering but not buckets of rain pelting down, mind you.

It's a time to go out, walk the hills, climb the cliffs. I happen to be in Southern California, but today was a soft day, and I took to my favorite little mountain.

At first, I needed only my hat, then my hoodie and finally my umbrella. The drops sounded like small pebbles falling, gently. Later, it would turn splattering and splashing, but not then.

Here you see my favorite boulder and my favorite umbrella bought in Toronto during a rainy trip. It makes me smile, no matter what the weather.

*

*

Filmmaker Alan Parker ("Evita," "Angela's Ashes") said, "Rain is very difficult in film, particularly in Ireland, because it's quite fine, so fine that the Irish don't even acknowledge that it exists."

In my new mode of trying to observe something new in my environment every day, I was delighted to find raindrops clinging to this chain railing.

*

*

And how about this tiny hobbit hole in the cliff? Two plants no bigger than peas have taken up residence on the doorstep.

*

One of Alice Hoffman's characters, Elinor in The Probable Future, has a name for all variations of rain. Fish rain. Rose rain. Daffodil rain. Swamp rain. And the fearsome stone rain.

*

A haiku I wrote some time ago fits this day.

*

a gust of wind,

the rain-beaded branch

bare again

*

*

The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) said, "I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped in the forests."

*

I'll leave you with this rock moss that looks like a strange hand and a couple of witty songwriter/singer quotes.

"Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet."--Roger Miller (1936-1992)

*

"Don't threaten me with love, baby. Let's just go walking in the rain."--Billie Holiday (1915-1959)

*