It never rains...

but it pours. And how it has poured. I've been told we've already had our yearly allotment of rain with a rain year that begins in October. Of course, we theoretically have our three driest months ahead of us, but it does go to show it's been raining an AWFULLY BLOODY LOT!

There is standing water all over our property. Some of it appears to be moving from place to place via mole tunnels. That's my theory anyhow. Puddles have just appeared by having water suddenly start flowing out of the ground. The moles have just got to be peeved. Serves 'em right.

The ground is wet enough that the riding mower got stuck. This when the Better Half's back is already out from putting in fencing (and fencing is tricky when it's raining and raining and raining). It's going to stay stuck for a few days. The truck got stuck once, but luckily there was someone operating a small backhoe sort of machine here that day. Would that I had thought to get out the video camera for that one. A large delivery van got stuck in the mud too and dug us four nice little seasonal ponds.

Turns out we have two soil types here. One is pretty heavy clay and poorly drained. Of course, the most convenient garden location is this lovely clay soil. There is a zone of theoretically well drained soil that is, slowly, turning into a garden. The fun there is that right at this moment, you can dig down about 30cm and hit water. That's an awfully high water table.

We've had numerous trees lose limbs since we moved in. One tree that I'd rather hoped we could save ended up being a water casualty. I think it was a plum tree and it just gently keeled over after a day of very heavy rain. I'm guessing the combination of VERY wet soil and mole activity probably destabilized it. Why couldn't it have been one of the weed trees--a cherry or an alder or a maple?

Gotta wonder what's going on with the septic tank too. You'll never get me to believe you can have an effective leach field with a water table that high. Here's hoping things dry out before we have yuck coming up our drains.

I guess this is all what I get for wanting to live somewhere with more rain than Arizona.

On the plus side, we have Siberian miner's lettuce growing wild all over the place, in addition to dandelions. We can have greens even if the garden drowns. We've been harvesting salmon berries for several weeks. Not that I've gotten to eat many of them. The Spawn loves them and has thus far managed to keep up with the number of ripe ones we find. Once we have a few warm, sunny days in a row though, she may leave a few for me. Next up will be the thimble berries. Then, of course, blackberry of several types. And I've identified at least a couple of filbert trees, so we'll get to fight the squirrels for those later on.