Reflecting on Raindrops and Bird Poop

Before the frost made the last of my fall flowers fold up their leaves and admit the growing season was over, we had a snowy-rain day. The hollyhocks, still with buds that hadn’t opened,  held little ponds of water in every nook and cranny – perfect little worlds to photograph.

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.
– John Ruskin –

What do you see in this mirror like raindrop? Doesn’t it remind you of one of those snow globes?

This drop contains part of my house, complete with a folded umbrella on the deck. Of course, the reflection is upside down and reversed left to right, because that is what raindrops do.

I wish I could tell you that I took this photo after reading these directions for taking raindrop photos: Capturing reflections in raindrop macros. But no, I didn’t even know I had captured my house until I looked at the photo on my computer. Then I was curious about what was going on, and some quick research told me that the raindrop acts like a wide angle concave lens with a field of view of about 165 degrees – sort of like a fish eye lens.

With a good part of my house appearing to be inside a single raindrop, I wondered what would happen if a single raindrop the size of my yard fell onto my house. This line of questioning led me to a website called What If? which proceeded to explain a similar, but far more devastating scenario What if a rainstorm dropped all of its water in a single giant drop?

You just have to go to this website – it also answers the age old question – If you went outside and lay down on your back with your mouth open, how long would you have to wait until a bird pooped in it?

It has taken me most of the morning to write this post, what with contemplating how many things I miss seeing when they are right before my eyes (you probably remember the wolf I didn’t see in the  jigsaw puzzle: Looking but not Seeing; and how many things mankind has invented after observing nature at work; and how disgusting it is when a bird poops in your full glass of wine, or on the back of your shirt when you are working in the garden.

What about you – can you stay on task and turn out a post in less time than it takes me to decide what the title is going to be, or do you find yourself mentally wandering off to the store for a new box of crayons so that you can colour every thought in your post differently?