I took these photos in June, but the same hot and heavy weather is still with us. I imagine I can see the heat being gently exhaled by the earth and water behind us, rising up to surround everything and everyone outside.
Category Archives: Close to Home
living in a snow globe world
Big, slow flakes swirling around rewind me of snow globes. This must be what it’s like to be inside one, except the snow doesn’t get recycled. And nobody’s shaking our world.
Big bird gets cold feet.
You’ve heard of “water off a duck’s back”? Snow doesn’t think it’s water.
What do you expect? It’s winter
Image
Despite the snow, there’s open water in the wetland. Two pair of mallards are hanging out. Not exactly the first robin of spring, but this time of year they are the most interesting birds on the block.
butterfly in the garden
my world: garden path
In addition to the grasses, the flowers have also grown and blossomed while we were away. These steps lead from our backyard around the front of the house. There are lots of flowers along the way, but the purple cloud – I think it’s thyme – at the top is all that shows in this photo.
my world: back home again
The reeds in the wetlands are now as tall as I am. If you compare their height here to that in earlier posts, you’ll see how much they’ve grown in the last month.
Our neighbor’s field is now plowed and planted. You are slightly closer to the reeds and can see their coloration more clearly.
As you can see in this video, it was quite windy that day. The sound quality is really poor in this, but you can hear our resident birds singing as the grasses ebb and flow like water.
my world, enchanted
I came home from my walk in the park, to find not one …
… but two, swans swimming about in the then high water behind our house.
my world: ps, the creek did rise
Only a few days after last week’s photos, the tall grass is nearly covered by water. Like most of the eastern US, we’ve had a lot of rain and cold, cloudy weather this spring. The day of this photo, the heavens opened and poured out water from mid-day on. Driving home from work, the rain was so intense, the wipers couldn’t clear the windshield. The only visibility was a brief glance right as the wipers wiped.
That followed days and nights of alternating torrents and slow, steady rain – with occasional tantalizing bits of blue sky and sunshine just to remind us what we were missing.
The next morning, it looked like this. Turns out we had 3.48 inches of rain in 24 hours. A ‘twenty-five year storm,” accompanied by floods, mudslides, and closed roads. That was only the 6th heaviest 24-hour rainfall recorded, but it was enough to make this our wettest spring ever.
My World is definitely waterlogged this week.
my world: catching up
I’ve hit one of those patches at work, where life is just crazy busy and blogging has to stand to the side for a moment or two. Lest I forget time is passing, here’s a look at how tall the grass by the creek has gotten. Look at any of the earlier photos this year and you’ll see that it’s benefited from the rain and humidity even if we humans haven’t.
my world: what if the creek does rise?
If you’re like me, you might have grown up hearing the expression “God willin’ and the creek don’t rise.”
That came to mind looking out back after the snow melted and the rains came.
Fortunately, I don’t need to cross this particular creek to get to work – or anywhere else – but I think of days when it wasn’t so easy to get around, and a rising creek could derail plans.
