Since rain has been scarce here in the last year, today is a day for being happy to see ‘too much’ of it–it’s pouring out here. Texas style. And what, pray tell, is Texas style? If you haven’t already heard, Texans pride themselves on everything they have or do being big, bigger, biggest, and the weather is no exception: when it’s hot and dry, let’s just git on out there and set all time records, like last year’s string of almost unbroken triple-digit temperatures that exceeded all previous years’ totals. That, of course, is hard to maintain with an accompaniment of rain, so the skies simply curled up into an impenetrable ball like a li’l ol’ armadillo and gave up nary a drop of water until the whole state finally retreated into official drought. Our county was the last to comply, being somewhat feisty and all, but we finally dried up too like last year’s roses.
So today’s pelting, while it won’t miraculously restore the lake levels and revive the dead trees, goes a long way toward soothing shriveled spirits. It will, of course, drown some of the poor little sprouts that fought their way to life after the heat relented, and that’s just the way things go in a land of thorny mesquites and tough hombres. So far we haven’t had to build an ark, and that’s a pretty good tradeoff as these Texas-sized weather happenings go. So today I’ll leave you with a little photo-essay and a link to a bit of YouTube rainy-day fun I posted last year, with a little help from my good friends Joe and Eddie.
The view from the kitchen is decidedly watery today! Hurray!
No worries about whether the little seed tray I prepped yesterday (sitting on the farther chair) will get watered . . .
Maybe I should consider installing a koi pond at the foot of the patio steps . . . "Just Add Fish" . . .
*Now* do you know what I mean by "eavesdropping"? Doesn't really matter if the gutters are clean or not; when it rains around here, they can't keep up with the rivers coming off the roof, so we just have Instant Water Features all 'round the perimeter of the house . . .
. . . and who doesn't like the soothing sound of a lovely waterfall?
From the shelter of the front porch, there are new "waterfront" views of ponds, rivers, small lakes and more cataracts showering off the roof . . .
I suppose the Texas Sage babies I picked up at the nursery yesterday won't drown, at least, because I hadn't set them in the ground yet, so they're still safely raised up in their pots for now . . .
. . . the little coreopsis I'd nursed through the winter indoors, however, is tucked in and now inundated. We'll see how that fares, never mind the rainbow chard sprouts (microcsopic green specks in the upper right of the photo)--I hope they turn out to be aquatic plants!
So this is how it goes here. Dry as a bone for months on end, and then an outpouring so generous that it might well cause new mutations of several plant species into amphibious forms in one fell swoop. I hadn’t realized we were moving to drought-and-monsoon country, but here we are. The slope of our property has definite ideas about where the water should go, and ultimately it does head for the little rivulet in the ravine behind the backyard, but in the meantime, I do think that directing the flow a bit on our actual lot will go a long way toward making the yard happier, if I can do it right. I was considering a moat around the house, since that’s the level spot where the water from up on the road naturally settles before wandering down-slope again, but I’m afraid the alligators I kept in there would eat too many of the neighborhood pets–or the neighbors–and that just wouldn’t be very sociable of me I suppose.
So I suspect a wiser thing might be to terrace a bit, put in some raised beds, and amend the living daylights out of the impermeable, gluey clay earth here, for starters. In the meantime, I’ll just say that it’s a good sump test for the property to tell me where the natural flow patterns and self-designed ponds like to go and see where it all leads. Good thing I got me some nice, tall, silly polka-dotted, ultra-waterproof gumboots. ‘Cause it’s rainin’ like nobody’s bidness out they-ah.
Art-Colored Glasses 
You guys in Texas need all the water you can get. But all things in moderation; don’t go too far the other direction.
And it’s been raining again this evening. I think we’re getting a mighty good dose this time around.
3.5 inches here during the night! Needed badly! !
Wahoo! Hope all your nice garden worms can swim!
I love all your views! You have a beautiful, nature landscaping. Even with the rain, it looks so inviting!!
Thank you, Linda! It has a long way to go, but I think there’s hope for it. 🙂 If it doesn’t either shrivel up or drown first!
From my perspective as a former home inspector, i would say…most definately try & mitigate any major ponds, puddles, sloughs, lagoons, moats, lakes, basins, lochs, reservoirs, sluices, inland seas, seaways or quagmires from forming anywhere near the foundation slab of said abode, sinkage, seepage, erosion are the most unwelcomed side effects…hope you are well, its not like its white & piling up as it so often does here, however, the question this year seems to be “where is winter” regards
It’s been an autumn-straight-to-spring year here so far too, so I’ve no idea what to expect in the near future.
As for the slab, we are fortunate in having just bought a year ago and had a very thorough inspection from a general home inspector *and* an engineer’s survey and report (we required it before making the purchase since the property sits on a slope and backs on a light ravine) and everything was given a firmly clean bill of health. However, since we intend to keep it that way, we are going to put French drains all ’round the perimeter as soon as we possibly can. Thanks for the confirmation of that plan!!
Ah, glorious rain! I heard a little snippet on tv or radio news about the re-categorization of part of north Texas concerning drought. I didn’t hear precisely how big an area or whether the level of drought had been lessened or entirely removed as being a drought area. But I would think you’ve been included and blessed. 🙂
I suspect we’re on the escapee list, given our bout of rain a couple of weeks back plus yesterday’s and today’s. Lucky us! Hope you’re getting some kindly clouds down your way as well! Might look a little perkier by the time we head down to San Antonio for TMEA next week if it’s getting watered a little. 🙂
Now that is what I call a downpour. That’s a lovely tree you can see from the front porch.
Yes, we are so very fortunate to have two of those wonderful Bradford flowering pear trees (the other’s visible in the first photo behind the bell). In the far upper left of that same photo, behind the roof, you can see a few branches of our red oak, and out front we have two very beautiful post oaks. They’re all the reasons we fell in love with the house before we even set foot inside. 🙂
In south Texas we got pummeled by the wet stuff … since this is only about the third time we had a heavy rain since my sister and I moved to this house, (more than a year ago), we got an instant education on the plethora of hidden rivulets and dry lakes that quietly exist in our yard that usually go unnoticed … until the wet stuff has us looking for a life preserver, or at the very least, a rubber ducky. One nice caveat was that about twenty pounds of the neighbor’s mulch flowed under the privacy fence and landed exactly where we had transplanted two rose bushes. Who says nature doesn’t have its own design? The roses were happy, and we were happy … not so sure about the neighbors, though.
Talk about transplanted! Apparently Ma Nature had designs on *your* place. 🙂
Sounds like you haven’t gotten any surprises about the locations of water *in* your house, and *that* is a really, really good thing! Happy drought-mitigation!
We’ve been getting on-and-off rain in Austin too. Central Texas is notorious for flash floods, and when I walked in my neighborhood nature park two days ago I could see that the creek had indeed gone up quite a bit and then subsided. The way to tell that the water has been up is by noticing leaves and other debris left wedged against creekside trees a couple of feet above the ground. I was looking for Missouri violets in a place where I found some a few years ago, but the water that most recently swept through that area washed all the little stuff away.
Steve Schwartzman
http://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com
The power of water. Endlessly intriguing. More than a little intimidating, if one has any sense at all.
YAY RAIN!!!
Thanks for the veiws from (close to) home…I sure remember those downpours.
Hope my Mom in SW Oklahoma got a good soaking, too.
So far it sounds like the current storm system’s cutting a pretty good swath around here, so she may well be getting a visitation too. Hope so!
Oh, and I meant to say…”THAT BELL! Wherever did you find that beauty?”
It is a bell, right?
Yes, it’s a bell. Glad you like it! Made by Tom Torrens (http://tomtorrens.com/). He was my undergrad sculpture prof but started making and selling sculptural bells and other garden things so successfully that when I graduated, he did too (left teaching to go full time with his business). But we remained friends, and when I took over the university gallery some years later I asked him to do a show in there of his bells, gongs, fountains, bird feeders and whatnot–featuring mostly his custom one-offs, not the production line pieces. It was such a fun show, and the uni’s percussion ensemble gave an improvisational performance in there using the bells and gongs, and everything. Anyway, I was talking to Tom and saying that R and I really wanted to buy one of his pieces but hadn’t decided which one to buy, and at the end of the exhibition, he *gave* this one to us. It was from his own garden. So it’s very sentimental as well as unique and cool looking, and it has a gorgeous tone too. Pretty nifty, huh!
Rain makes me worry in these days, I hope nothing to be bad… Your photographs so nice, I loved your views… Thank you dear Kathtyn, Have a nice weekend, with my love, nia
Thank you, my dear Nia! So far only good things are happening with the rain right around us; we’ve been in need of it for a long time! The earth is thirsty.
Rain, oh joyous rain! What an interesting photo-essay, and I must say seeing all that rain brings me a little bit of inspiration.
There’s something about rain that’s more inspiring than any kind of weather? Makes me feel lucky to live in a city that rains a lot.
It’s the water of life! And we’re very grateful for its visit here right now. 🙂
I love reading rain through your Texan eyes. Here in Vancouver we always have a very heavy share of it yet I still love it. I think you should document the mutation of your plants species into amphibious forms, just for the fun of it 😉
I love your photos, enjoy your week-end with or without rain.
Hugs
Thanks, Anyes my dear. Yes, after so many years of living in the Seattle area, it’s a whole different world to be in dry, even drought-stricken, Texas. The rain feels like a taste of home, that’s for sure. 😉 You have a lovely weekend, too!
xoxo
I love it when it rain like this , occasionally.
after the rain, everything smell so fresh and clean 🙂
Even during the rain I like that smell. I think it might have a little to do with ozone levels in the atmosphere, at least when there is some charge coming from storm formation, but mostly just that wonderful rinsing the world gets freshens everything up beautifully!
I could feel the rain falling on my face as I looked at your photos, and I could almost smell the ozone. Thank you, thank you, thank you for the rain drops!
Believe me, I’m saying many thanks!!! The yard already has a new lease on life, only hours after the rain.
Rain, glorious rain! Beautifully captured Katyryn! We too have been having loads of rain the past 3 days, also much needed! Here’s hoping our water tank is full again. I look forward to seeing how your garden comes to life after all of the rain.
Have a super weekend.
🙂 Mandy
Yes, you’ve had at least as much water-starvation as we have. What great news that you’re getting a bit of respite too! Here’s to full water tanks and happy plants!!
Hope you’re enjoying a great weekend! Ours is all work and no play for Richard, as is next weekend, so we’re working to find little spots of breathing space for him during the weeks. So I’m taking a much-needed opportunity to do a bit of deep cleaning at and in the house . . . which *is* a super thing to get out of the way! 😀
Thanks for such a great post! I really enjoyed my recent trip to Texas and even in that short time I had the feeling that “everything’s bigger in Texas”! Your photos are beautiful 🙂
Thanks, Meg! We’re just so happy to *see* some wet stuff coming down out there that it feels like the place is being revamped altogether. 🙂
Oh my – didn´t realise Texas and Andalucia had so much in common!
Well, in answer to a correspondent who was musing on the Weird World Weather patterns, I said that I think the whole planet is shifting patterns, but not in the way that is really described by ‘global warming’ so much as in having all of the extremes get more-so: hot temperatures hotter, dry weather drier, cold colder and so forth–at least, that’s my view of what’s been happening over the last couple of decades and seems likely to continue for awhile. We’ll see what we see. 😉 In any case, apparently there *are* family ties between our regions!!
Having family in Houston, I’ve been aware of the storms “down there” and y’all have had plenty! I assume you haven’t a basement which, right about now, is a really good thing. The little coreopsis’ problems would be nothing in comparison. Besides, basements are notoriously famous for being spider havens. Who needs that?
The soils here are just not conducive to basements (I certainly haven’t seen a single one since moving here), so we’re off that hook. Once we put proper drainage around our perimeter I’ll feel a lot more secure about our foundation slab (see Mark’s note above), but other than that, we’ll take the buckets-full of rain after the psoriatic dryness of the summer and fall!
It must be dry and dusty here in my brain because it heaved a sigh of relief as it captured the rain downpour in your photos… I love a good rain and the sound on the roof is just the best! Just stirs up creativity, doesn’t it?
One of my fond memories of the first house of my childhood is of rain on the tile roof. I always thought it sounded like a boiling pot of macaroni! See, I was food-obsessed from the start! 🙂
An awesome analogy.. or is it a metaphor? or a simile?
My family in Houston told me about the trees that were lost last summer to the drought – old trees that had lived through decades but finally died from thirst. It was heartbreaking to hear. Rain sounds like a promise, and in your case, a big promise with a wet, sloppy kiss. 🙂
Indeed, I was so happy to see the rain that I wet my plants! 😉
Wow thats a rain! Me I am sick and tired of it as this summer here in NZ is full of rain, the rain Gods have stolen our summer. In a week we almost have 4 days of rain for more than a month but it was a bit good this last week I think it barely rained, I hope the sun here shines through before autumn kicks in.
Oh, I hope you get some true summer weather before it’s all over, Raymund! Our family in Washington state had the same problem last summer and it gets pretty miserable when you wonder if the sun will ever shine again!!
When it rains it purrs. Even the kitties look outside in disbelief, as if to say, “What’s that?”
Must be when it’s raining just dogs, not *cats* and dogs! 🙂
I really enjoyed these pictures of the rain.