The rain has slowed down quite a lot, but it’s still coming down. The worst of it has passed us by, and at this point, we’re getting more of a sprinkle than a rain.
Continuous rain for almost 2 days, however, does accumulate!
The area behind the garage is quite the lake. It’s actually larger than it appears in the photo, as much of it is hidden by the grass. The paths between the raised beds are full of water. The area I think someone tried to make into a ditch, along the fence line north of the driveway, is full of water, as is the driveway and the “moat” around the garage. There’s a moat around the storage house, as well, and more water in the space behind it.
The main garden area, where it’s still rough from the last time it was plowed (badly) before we moved here had little pools of water all over, of course. There’s also water in the paths between all the raised beds, and pooling in the area where we tried to grow potatoes, the year it flooded. At the far end of the crab apple trees, where water accumulates every spring, is another area of water that extends almost half way up the rows of silver buffalo berry! There’s even pooling under the crab apple trees.
The old basement is, of course, quite wet. The fans are keeping it down a bit, but some areas don’t just get damp, but pool, so we have go do down and sweep the water into the sump pump reservoir in one area, and into the floor drain in the other half of the basement.
I ended up making an unexpected trip to town. After unlocking the gate and getting into the truck, I reached into my pocket to put my cell phone in the spot I keep it while driving… and it wasn’t there.
Figuring I forgot it in the house, I backed the truck up to the small gate in the chain link fence, so I wouldn’t have to wade through the moat again, then went in to look.
Nothing.
So I tried phoning my cell phone with our land line.
It didn’t even ring, but went immediately to a message saying I was being automatically forwarded to voice mail. So I hung up.
The only thing left was that it somehow fell out of my pocket while I was going to the garage and the gate. So I started back tracking.
I was just reaching the part of the driveway that goes into the yard – which is under the moat surrounding the garage – when I saw a dark rectangle in the grass.
With a muddy tire track running right over it.
Much to my shock, nothing was broken. The case I have for my phone is a very basic wallet type, with a cover over the screen. That case saved my phone! It was quite wet, of course, so there was the warning not to plug in the device. A warning that finally went away, just now!
After wiping off the phone as best I could, I set it over the window vent on the dash and headed into town, did my errand, then headed back. I was able to use the phone to message my family without any problems.
Once inside, I used the toothpick end of a floss pick to clear out any debris that might have been in the port. I also took off the cover, and wiped up the moisture caught in it. Then I used a dual valve balloon pump, kept from our busking days, to dry the port a bit before just setting it on its stand to dry. All seems to be working well, except it’s telling me I can make emergency calls only. So I need to fuss with that for a while.
The main thing is, this thing fell into the edge of a pool of water, got driven over by a truck, and didn’t break!!!
What a relief!
Meanwhile, as I was in town, I got a message from my brother. He has started getting alerts on his phone about overland flooding, telling people not to try to try through flooded areas. It turns out while I was in town, they got flooding alerts, too, though where I was, there didn’t seem to be any issues at all. Where we are, we’re not getting any alerts for flooding at all, so that’s good.
It will probably take several says of no rain for things to dry up enough that we can get back to work on the garden beds and harvesting the dead trees. I am most definitely not complaining, though. This hopefully makes up for the lack of moisture when the snow melted, since we had so little snow this past winter. I definitely want to take a walk beyond the outer yard and see how gravel pit, etc. are. We should have a flowing creek in the municipal drainage ditch right now. When outside, we are hearing cows, but not seeing them, so I’m not sure if the renter’s cows are on this quarter, or if we’re hearing someone else’s cows. The important thing is, the gravel pit and pond should be full of water for them, and the gravel pit, at least, should stay full for the year, since it has so much clay to hold it all in.
It may make some things inconvenient, but I am very thankful for all this rain.
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 