Too Much of a Good Thing

Storm north of us on Wednesday evening

Wednesday's weather was a nightmare for many folks in our area, but not for us.  We have been so very lucky to escape all the violent weather.  Around 5PM, two thunderstorms came rolling through the state, one to our north with high winds, possible tornadoes and hail and the other to our south with large hail and high winds, and of course, torrential rain.  We managed to somehow sneak right through the middle and came out the other side with just another 1/4" of rain. My heart goes out to those who weren't as lucky.  This has been a crazy year for weather.

We had near-drought conditions for the last five to six years here, and would have given ANYTHING for some rain as there were worries over wells going dry and crops were suffering.    Now we have way more rain than we need and it is just as severe.

Our niece, Laura, sent us some pictures from her home, eight miles away, this is the result of 2.5" of rain in less than a half hour on already saturated ground:

Our two beautiful grand-nieces, Katelynn & Paige

Having fun!

There are many people with wet basements to contend with, that's for sure.

Yesterday we had a full 24 hours of sunshine and it was wonderful!  I managed to get the lawn mowed here (and Joel mowed at Mom's) and did some weeding in the afternoon. 

This is echinacea 'Green Jewel' though the green isn't showing up so well in this photo.

I also did some tidying up in the driveway, picking up sticks and leaves from the last storm

After supper, Joel and I decided to trim up some spruce trees for my near-90 yr old mother.  We limbed two big ones up and removed two more smaller ones that weren't doing well in the shade of a black walnut.   I came home with an entire trailer full of brush.  In keeping with Joel's new rule of no brush piles sitting around, he and I burned all the limbs last night.  With it being so wet, there are no worries of starting a fire anywhere else, one good thing about this weather. We were done by 10:30PM which made for a long night, but it sure felt good to be doing something productive which also made Mom very happy.  She was sick of looking at dead limbs and if she wants, we will probably be taking down the two trees entirely and replanting something nice instead.

This morning the rain set in again; and it looks as if we will not get out of the woods until Sunday at the earliest.  They are calling for 100% chance of precipitation and thunderstorms; it's almost as if we are stuck in this wet weather pattern the same way we were stuck in the drought.  I took these pics just as the rain started up:

  Well, sitting here, watching it pour again, I guess I will be working on something other than gardening today, and tomorrow and the next day.....sigh.  I know, it could be much worse, and at least there's flowers still trying to bloom despite the 10" of rain we have had since the first of July--not to mention the incredible rains we had in June.  I started gardening in the first place because of two things, my love for growing things and the lift in spirits it gave me from depression.  So, it's depressing not to be able to work at it---but I know, this too shall pass.  I really wish we could share this overabundance of rainfall with those who really need it.

Brighter days are around the corner. 

Karen