Rain and More Rain

Yet another day of rain.

Lately, rain seems to be the norm.

 

It rained again last night and we awoke to a driveway puddle.

I have been out at school for the last week painting,

so I haven't had a lot of time for mowing.  

This is what happens when it rains everyday for a month.

The grass in the orchard becomes knee high.

It doesn't look that bad does it?  Take a closer look.

This stuff is hard to mow.  Especially when it is wet.

I really, really miss my goats.

But it looks so nice after it is mowed.

 

I came home on Monday and mowed in the rain.

Or at least until the torrential downpour began.

Guess what?

It rained again today.

It didn't just rain though.

We had hail and funnel clouds.

Mardell called and told us to take cover.

Then Jane, our librarian, called and told us to take cover.

Then Sister Two texted me to watch the sky.

We were.

 

We watched it hail and pile up in drifts.

We watched it flood the playground and the adjoining ditch.

We discovered that the gym sounds really

creepy when it is raining hard and hailing.

Then we went down the hall to discover

that the 5 and 6th grade room flooded.

The water was pouring out of a closet and

came inches away from the three computers on the floor.

  We rescued the computers and then began mopping.

Vicki is a much better mopper than I am.

But that's okay.

I have other talents.

Once we got the water under control,

we thought that we should notify someone.

Our custodian is out of town until tomorrow.

Our principal is in Lincoln.

The secretary is with her.

We knew we should call the head custodian.

His name is Larry.

We're sure he has a last name, but we don't know what it is.

Normally, we would just look at the secretary's handy-dandy list of numbers; but alas, the office is getting new carpet so everything is stacked in the hallway.

We figured out to reach him and he said he'd be out yet that afternoon.

We finished cleaning it up and then thought

that perhaps we should check the other rooms.

No sooner had we finished and Larry appeared.

He explained to us that the roads were washed out and

that we'd better go home or else we'd be spending the night. 

The roads were wet, but didn't appear to be too bad.

Uh-huh.  Famous last words.

We basically floated back to town.

This is a field.

This sort of looks like Little Lake Alice.

But it's not.  It's another field.

We finally made it to the highway and 

we were sure it would be smooth sailing from there on.

Poor choice of words as it turned out.

This was about a foot deep.

I went to town and picked up Mardell.

I was sure we would need my trusty CR-V 

with all wheel drive to navigate the roads.

Of course, we had to stop and buy cat food first.

We were completely out and we didn't dare
step foot in the house without it.

Willowby didn't trust me to remember,
so she brought in this tasty morsel for her family.

 

She proudly laid it on the sheepskin dog pad

and Pudge promptly claimed it.

 

In case, you missed it --- Pudge is not a kitten.

And this critter is not very friendly looking!

But I got ahead of myself.  We were headed home.

But we didn't seem to get the same amount

of rain that we did in town and out at school.

In fact, it cleared up right away when

we got home so I went out to investigate.

What a difference thirty minutes makes!

The worms were out in full force.

My new smoke tree really likes the rain.

So do my new raspberry plants.

 

Yep, I planted another dozen this year.

I am going to have raspberries coming out of my ears. 

The orchard is full of water.

It looks like a bog.

 

I might have to consider cranberries.

With all the rain we have had our locust trees have bloomed.

 

I didn't even know that locust trees were supposed to bloom.

 

The blossoms are pretty.

These are in our west pasture.

Everything looked good there, so I decided to hike down to the creek.

We had flash flood warnings out and our creek has been pretty full.

But it looks like it usually does.  We still have a good foot and a half before it would flood.

  

The last time we had this much rain, 

we found this snapping turtle on our bridge.

It rained 3 to 5 inches in town.

We didn't get that much.

We just got wind.

We lost five trees this time.

 

 

  

  

 

It's a good thing I've planted a dozen trees this spring.

Next year we are definitely going to have to buy trees from the NRD.

After determining the tree toll, I discovered mushrooms hidden along the way.

 

Some were big.

 

Some were little.

 

Here a shroom.

 

There a shroom.

Everywhere a shroom, shroom.

 

Wait a minute!  That's not a shroom!

That's a snake!

And to think, some of you were missing my blog posts!