I would rather have snow.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the rain. If I had to choose a certain weather that I liked the most, rain would have the silver medal while snow would take the gold. This explains why I would brave the wet elements with someone else’s camera and snap rain pictures.

A beautiful walk with the trailers of tiny streams in the grass . . .


A stroll along the riverbank . . .


A water fountain coming from underneath the shed door . . .

Wait a minute!

Too much rain, and where the heck did the river come from? Oh, that’s right. It used to be part of the yard and the driveway leading to my parents’ abode. I went there to pick up the mail since they would not be home today or tomorrow. Also, I wanted to see how flooded the house had become. Yeah, the backroom (family room) along with the furnace room will flood even though the house is built on the side of a huge hill. The backroom (yes - there is a reason I call the family room a backroom . . . maybe one day I will tell you the dysfunctional story) is dry - so far. The furnace room is starting to flood from the pipe leading to the water pump (they have well water.)

I would rather have snow. At least with snow you can shovel it around to where you want it to go. At least with snow it gives the wet ground a break from trying to absorb too much rain. And out here, the ground cannot absorb anymore. Even in hilly Pennsylvania, we get flooding.

All this rain reminds me of a small story from my childhood.
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The Pinecone and the Water Pipe.

A true child in love with the rain could find something to do outside, even on schooldays. I was no exception. I would throw on my clothes, grab my special umbrella that had the “Peanuts” comic strips on the see-through plastic canopy, and head outdoors.

On those blustery days, I walked along the driveway while reading about Lucy pulling the football out from Charlie Brown before he could kick it and Linus fighting to keep his blue blanket from “vulture” Snoopy who leaned on the tree branch. Along the way, I picked up pinecones and stuffed them into my pockets. We had a lot of pine trees (5 blue spruce and about 10 evergreens) I had to pass to reach the end of the driveway. There, a large pipe stretched underneath the dirt and crushed stone as it kept the water along the ditch from washing out all the gravel from the driveway. (Rural area - no proper drainage except ditches along the road and creeks to steer the water away.)

Back to the pinecones . . . I was choosy on which ones to take. The open ones might be pretty to look at, but they would not work out well. Now, as for the closed cones, those ones had potential. Less surface retention when they shot out the end of the pipe, depending upon the speed of the rushing water, and able to break through the dam of bunched leaves at the other end.

Heehee. Can you imagine driving down the road, seeing a girl in pigtails pulling out dirty pinecones from her pocket while using her chin to hold her Peanuts umbrella steady, as she would drop pinecones into the water at one end of the pipe before running to the opposite end and cheering when her little tree seed missiles shot out and plowed through the old Fall leaves?

It was a strange sight indeed for a girl who could find some fun even on a rainy day.