Rain, Rain Go Away

I was reminded earlier this week of the Ray Bradbury short story, There Will Come Soft Rains, for reasons I won’t get into here.

It’s one of my favorite short stories ever. It concludes with a poem of the same name, and the coincidence of today’s misty rain is causing that poem to run a continuous loop in my mind:

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

-Sara Teasdale

Depressing, but pretty. Sort of like rain on chilly fall days.

I suppose there are good things to be said for soft autumn rains:

Rain on the grass means no mowing the lawn today.

Rain on the leaves means no raking (hooray!).

Rain on the clothesline means a day off from laundry.

What to do with a day inside?
The kids are busying themselves with painting.

I am eyeing the cheese pumpkin.

Pumpkin whoopie pies, to be sure, but what else?
Pumpkin soup? Pumpkin muffins? Pumpkin carrot cake? I’ve not decided yet.

Later, a cup of tea and Breaking Dawn, all 754 pages of it.

Maybe I’ll watch my latest Netflix arrival, North by Northwest, while snuggled under the covers.

Sounds like a good day to me.
What do you like to do on a rainy Saturday?

P.S. I looked up There Will Come Soft Rains on Amazon, and the collection of short stories I own that includes it is available for a penny! This is seriously a great gift for middle-school aged readers, or for yourself.

The collection is called Twenty-One Great Stories (Mentor) and is so worth the cost of shipping.