(Via Country Gardener)

Posted by admin to March, cruelest month, flooding, mud season on 2008-03-19, 19:38:00

T.S. Eliot wrote:

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

Do you think he might really have meant March, but that April just sounded better?

Today's pictures are of the great meltdown and our creek flooding after the rain. Cruel indeed, but we need to get through mud season to reach spring.

No red-winged blackbirds yet. Last year at this time they'd been here a week. The snow is melting late. But at last it is melting.

Private investigations
© Yvonne Cunnington, Country Gardener

(Via Country Gardener)

Posted by admin to drought map, flooding, neverending drought on 2007-08-24, 05:01:00

One of my sisters lives in Algonquin, Illinois, near Chicago. In constrast to our never-ending drought, she reports:

Crazy rain – we are now at 27.5 inches since mid July. We drove through several areas of flooding over the road on our way home from work last night. It took 90 minutes as opposed to the usual 25 to get home. The river in our town is flooding as well. Good thing we don't live near it.

Meanwhile, in Mike Johnston's part of Wisconsin it also keeps raining. As he wrote yesterday:

Damned if it's not going to rain again today, if the gray sky is any indication. I don't mean to complain, because I know a lot of people have gotten far worse in recent days, weeks, and months—in other parts of this country as well as in England—but, man, have we ever gotten hammered lately. It's been raining for six days. We haven't had a chance to get the grass cut in between downpours. Every day I think, well, it can't rain again today. I should stop thinking that.

In the six weeks that my sister has seen more than 27 inches of rainfall, we have just barely cobbled together two inches in dribs and drabs over the course of several disappointing little showers. We could actually use six days of rain in a row, we're so parched.

Here's the result: the Agriculture Canada drought map (click on the picture to see it bigger) updated to Aug. 22 shows record dryness spreading through many regions in the southern part of the province. We are in the record dry red area between London and Toronto.