utenzi

There hasn't been a drop of rain on my lawn in over a week. And during that week it was consistantly in the 90s with one day in triple digits. When I walk on the lawn it sounds like rice crispies: Crack, snapple, pop. Late last night, after midnight so I guess it was actually early morning, we finally had a downpour. When I got up this morning my rain gauge greeted me with a very welcome 1.25 inches of precipitation. My lawn is very happy! Now I need to go get some gas for my lawn mower. I'm all out and I suspect that I'll be mowing on Sunday. My kayak trip on Saturday is going to keep me from lawn duty that day. It's amazing how fast grass grows when it finally gets some water.

All summer long the area I live in has been in a bad drought. Not the greater RTP area, though they are a little short of usual, but just an area maybe 5 or 6 miles on each side. I only mowed my yard something like 4 times during June, July, August and early September. Now that the weather is cooling and rain isn't as crucial it's raining every third day. WTF? I mowed last Saturday and already it needs it again. I spent 90 minutes out there mowing after work tonight and there's still an hours worth left to do. Since it's supposed to rain tomorrow afternoon I doubt I'll be able to do it. I can't mow very early in the morning due to the dew. So the first thing I'll be doing is to scoot into Chapel Hill between 8 and 9am to dose my mice, then wander over to Umstead Park to do the Company Mill trail (5.5 miles) then drop off some stuff at Julie's house that she forgot here (a task I've managed to procrastinate on for 2 months now). Then it's back t...

Kinda makes you think of show tunes, huh? But that's not the subject here. Roses, like the one over there on the left, are just the starting point. And no, whiskers on kittens isn't the next point. Get your mind off that song! This rose adorns a bush that is growing on the side of my backyard shed. I took the picture the evening I'd gotten so wet and dirty while hiking. Since I was already soaked, I didn't mind wading through the wet grass to take pictures of wet flowers. They're so much prettier when they have drops of water on them. These might be going a little too far though. Since it was still raining when I took the pictures, there were raindrops all over and maybe the effect was a little too pronounced. Raindrops might be one of those things best left as an accent not the main course. This next picture was taken just a foot or so away from the rose. While I think the flower portion is pretty with its faint blue or purplish color, this weed is vicious. Admitte...

Much of the southeast is in a multiple year drought. This is certainly the case where I live in eastern NC and where my parents live in western SC. However, oddly enough, anytime I visit my parents, it rains here. I took this picture yesterday in the late afternoon. Sure doesn't look very drought-like now does it? In fact, it's rained all three days I've been here. Weird. Now to be honest, on Friday and today the amount of rain was minimal, but it did rain. And on Saturday there was 0.38 inches according to the digital rain gauge on my parent's deck. That's a pretty decent shower. Still, Lake Hartwell is down something like 14 feet from the full water mark and there's a lot of docks around the lake that are not only stranded on dry land, but you can't even see water from some of them. Wouldn't that stink? Not only does this limit the water recreation aspect for the homeowner but also there's a value situation. Homes on the lake go for 3 times what th...

Some people might think of this as a miracle but I just call it overdue rain. This picture here is my backyard taken from the shelter of the door to my laundry room. I left work early today due to a sinus headache and pinched nerve in my back. I went to bed soon after getting home and now I find myself wide awake at midnight. Wonderful. We received some rain over the weekend, starting late on Saturday and continuing through today. I got soaked leaving Wal-mart Sunday night when a light rain decided to become a downpour whilst I was inside trying to find food. That, apparently, is a mistake late Sunday night. There was nothing attractive in the veggie department and the meat and bread areas had meager pickings as well. I left the store with just a few items--and a lot of rain. In case the rain wasn't obvious in the picture above, here's a closeup of the bird water dish. It was really coming down. We still have a huge rain deficit here in Eastern NC but this is definitely helping...

Most of the today it's been around 41f. That's cold. And rainy. Just not a nice day. So what did I do? I went hiking! Yeah, I know. Dumb! Well, it's not much of an excuse but this was a hike with a few people that I know and it had been prearranged so I didn't want to skip out on it. Almost everyone showed up too--7 out of 12, anyway. This picture is of us marching out along a highway towards the end of the hike. By this time it was coming down pretty hard. It started sprinkling just as we started but the serious rain didn't hit until we were over 2 miles from the parking lot. This picture is of us near the beginning of the journey when we were only facing the occasional drop or two of rain. Ahhh, those were the days. We used sewage pipes to go over the stream we were walking along. They were pretty easy to walk over---but they got a lot slicker as the rain increased. That's why we were walking along the road and not the stream on the way back to the parking lo...

Today is a holiday here in the USA. Thanksgiving. I'm not celebrating it today but rather putting it off until Saturday. As a result, instead of a thanking post, I'm going to vent a bit about the weather. Deal with it! LOL Here in eastern North Carolina people were commenting about the weather a few weeks back. The reason for that is that for 6 weeks we had wonderful weather Monday through Friday and then we'd have cold and usually rainy weather for the weekend. It was getting to be quite remarkable but two weeks ago that trend ended. Since then we've had cold weather every day and most of those days were rainy and very windy. Nearly a third of those days had such bad weather that they received coverage on the national news. So, you might ask, what caused this trend change? I'm glad you asked!! Sure, some people will say it's global warming, or maybe God's wrath, or even that old excuse El Nina. Some or all of those might find some resonance in your mind bu...