Cheer up, Dee, it's suppose to clear out somewhat tomorrow. Despite the the 7-8-10 inches (I really have no idea how much rain we've had here in the past week), as of this morning I had no standing water anywhere in my yard. No wonder why it gets so dry when we don't get rain. Today has been the worst though. The dogs won't even go out.

I try to take a long walk though town every night. My town is located on the CT river and one of our landmarks is a river cove where there is a large parking lot, public boat launch, floating docks, etc. Last Saturday the cove was normal. By Sunday, most of the parking lot was underwater. On Tuesday the road to the cove was closed, the parking lot was completely gone and the water was higher than I've ever seen it(luckily the path where I walk is on high ground). Thursday the water had receded somewhat. Tonight I couldn't walk outside because it was raining too hard. It should be interesting tomorrow.

Sue

No kidding!!!! I have to say, dragging around hoses was way less work than this. Carrying water out of the basement two buckets at a time isn't much fun! And the darn roof is leaking. I think I'm going to build an ark tomorrow and load up my bulbs, two by two...

Tina

Yup, so glad I didn't plant my bulbs yet. Tonite I planted some in pots for forcing. That felt nice to "garden" a bit.

Fortunately, no puddles here, but its not over yet.

I just noticed that a fuschia plant that I cut back awhile ago is budding up nicely. Probably covered in PM though. :-(

Ten inches is what we got on Saturday. We've probably gotten at least five since then. We walked to the waterfalls on the creek on Sunday, and they were the highest we've seen. There isn't a lot of flooding here, or at least not that I've seen. The swamp seems a bit high, but it takes an awful lot to change the swamp. The side yard next to the swamp gets a bit wet, but seems to dry out pretty quickly after the rain stops. That's the area I don't put gardens in because the water table is about six inches down.

I don't know how many flood warnings I've got from the weather people in the last few days for Columbia, Dutchess, Ulster, and Litchfield Co. There was a quite detailed one that showed up a couple of times about flooding around the Housatonic.

We've had about 13" in Fishkill, NY and have been under a flood warning all week but here in Mystic much less. We arrived in Mystic late last night after a very long ride in driving rain and found the mum pots blown all over the yard so there must have been a lot of wind along the coast. It was very dark so couldn't see much but did notice one corner of my hakone grass hedge was sitting in about 2" of water (even after amending the soil 18" down when we planted it still wasn't draining fast enough). My moss garden which grows on compacted soil under a CO blue spruce was actually "floating" on little "waves" :(

Guess we'll have to take a weighted roller to the moss to stick it down again after the water drains away.

We'd had all the trees trimmed just last year so didn't see any branches down...or at least not large ones.

I'm waiting for first light now to take a walk around and survey the damage. Boy did it pour overnight! It woke me up around 2:00 a.m. and I checked the radar...I think we must have gotten a couple inches overnight.

After my shower this morning...instead of using deodorant...think I'll use Rustoleum instead...I'm creaking and my strawberry blonde hair seems a little redder than normal!

So, has anybody figured it out...you know...added up the totals versus what should have fallen by now a little at a time...are we still in a drought? :o)

The moss is finally perking up, after being an awful shade of brown for most of the summer. That's one plant that just can't be satisfied with a sprinkler, no matter how lavish you are with it. And I suppose the slugs are working hard to get their population levels back to normal, I hope they're having fun.

I'm starting to worry about the bulbs that are sitting in bags on my desk - camassia leichtlinii and lycoris squamigera, allium nigrum and a. azureum. None of them are early bloomers, so I hope they won't mind waiting for the rain to end before being planted. It may be awhile before the ground can be worked, right now it's mighty soupy.

Despite being located on dense clay, I haven't any standing water after 10" of rain. It was just that dry. The very amended gardens have sucked it up like nothing I've seen.

All summer long I made every drop of hose water count. Everything had to be watered as it is all new in-the-ground and I did just what I had to do to keep everything going. Everything now looks so much more robust and happy. I swear some of the climbing roses have shot up a good 6" since the rain started.

I, too, am looking at bulbs in bags and am glad that I remembered my grandmother's advice to not plant them until it was "dark at dinner."

Hope everyone gets through this safely ....

Martie

Mushrooms everywhere here! :D

8-9 days of rain and Friday was the tipper! West Hartford had a total of 13+ inches (depends on who you talk to) but the ground and the stream at the end of my property finally had enough! My sump pump went all day and night, the back hall ceiling started leaking, and this morning the water was at least at the Channel Encroachment line/100 year flood zone. Yet it was amazing how much did recede during the day, enough to go out and take pics and survey the damage of the mid and upper yard. I can't believe the amount of debris that is stuck against the plants, how the long grass (yeah, all that water for a week and it just kept growing!)is all bent over in the direction of the flooding. The sight of my winterberries loaded with red berries lifted my spirits! While I love bulb items (only have Daffies because of the deer), it is at times like this that my heart bleeds a little for all those of you that are saddened by the loss of your newly planted bulbs.....critters are enough of a problem, now we have had a major flood!

So we had our own version of the Nile flooding and bringing all sorts of nutrients to the soil without our having to lift an arthritic arm! And as the earth goes through its cycles, lets hope that we won't see another flooding event for many more decades.....I vividly remember a blizzard 3/7/93 followed by big melt 2 weeks later and major flooding. Again end of January '96 - and my sump pump broke! I never saw a basement fill so fast!!!! Now I have a spare for 'just in case' the '96 one breaks.....

Man oh man oh man!! Am I ever PO'd!! Now, the garden I can deal with. I may get worried, concerned, upset, sad, but I know it's all a cycle and that in the garden, these things happen, and that there's not much one can do but go with the flow (literally, in the case of all this rain, lol!)

But last night, I went to check on the basement - I think I mentioned above how furiously my sump pump was running. Well, having had the unexpected expense of having the basement waterproofed when we moved in 10 years ago, I've been trying to talk my DH into getting the basement finished as a family room. He kept balking, saying, "What if it floods?" After 10 years of no major wetness, I finally get him to - well, I can't even call it "agree". Let's say he has extremely reluctantly realized that I plan on going ahead with this renovation whether he likes it or not. So when is the contractor coming? Yep, tomorrow morning, bright and early. And what happened last night? Yep, the cellar flooded.

Sigh...

:)
Dee

I also have mushrooms growing in the yard, and they're edible. My mother has been coming over for the last couple of day to pick them. No flooding on my property, but there are a couple of houses down the street with front yards below the level of the road that look like ponds right now. I happen to be on the highest ground in the neighborhood, fortunately.

The grass is 8 inches tall, we had just reseeded about half the lawn, after topdressing with compost, and it needs cutting badly. I was getting tired of watering it with the hose everyday, but enough, already. Everything I got at the fall swap is still sitting in pots waiting to be planted somewhere. I think it's going to stop for a couple of days, anyway, before we get some more on Tuesday.

We're the highest house on the street too but water found it's way into the basement here for the first time since we've owned this house (10 years) :(. It only came up about an inch on one end and has since receded but that was enough to thoroughly soak the carpet in the finished section. The carpet may have to go but things could certainly be worse.

The water in the cove is back up too and has created a whole new shoreline. While I was out on my walk tonight some jack*** ignored the billboard size sign that said the park and road were closed and went sailing down the street towing a boat on a trailer. It's a narrow residential street so no place to turn around. The patrol car arrived just as I was walking by and the idiot was trying to back the trailer back up the street around some other fool who drove down behind him.

Hey, at least the sun came out this afternoon although it took a few minutes for me to figure out where the light was coming from.

Sue

Hi,

This is the first time I am posting here. I am so happy to have found so many people from this area. I also have problems with the rain in more ways than one. First off, because of the rain on Oct. 7 the airport was closed (in DC) so we had to sit on the plane on the runway for a long time. (Keep in mind when the plane isn't moving, the air inside it isn't either and it got hot and stuffy). Finally got to DC and it rained until the day before I came home on Oct. 10 and it was a bumpy ride. Of course it was raining here and never stopped until today but in the meantime, I got the flu/cold and was sick all week long and still have it. My garden pretty well got washed away. Today is my BD so my DH was going to take me out for the night but we didn't go because I am sick plus we were watching the news and the place we were going to go to was flooded so they are now closed. So I really am having a bad day even if the sun did come out. Of course I am looking on the bright side though...I rather the rain than snow.

Sue

Yep same same up here in Stafford, CT.

Down by the center of the 'old'section of town there is a big old 'Mill Pond' and I felt so bad for the folks living around there. The pond went way up and so did the river. There's a guy down there who had a big tomato garden this past summer in his backyard, (a big backyard) which is now not only a pond but also a raging river! Unbelievable. Roads washed out everywhere. A tree fell down because of softened/washed away banks and fell right on someone's house.

I drove from WMass down Rte 91 last night and then through Enfield down 190 to Stafford and there were spots where the water was at least a foot or two deep on the road. I heard on the radio today that parts of 91 were closed in both directions because there was - get this - THREE FEET of water on the highway!

I haven't planted any bulbs out of sheer laziness/no time, so I guess I lucked out a bit on that.

We are on a hill, but there is more hill above us and the water has washed down some of my stone walls... oddly enough the basement which has been somewaht wet in the past is really dry. I wonder if the 'holes' got plugged with mud or something!
I'm glad I am not at my old rented house in Sturbridge, MA anymore - that place had a fieldstone basement and a sump that barely kept up with water in regular rainstorms...

Can you imagine if all that rain was SNOW?

We heard on the news yesterday that if this storm had been snow...we would have had, on average in CT, 93" of snow! Oh my...

About the bulb issue...we planted ours already. Will they have a chance? Any thoughts....

We are so lucky. Our road got washed out and a nearby bridge is still closed; but, nothing of importance happened to the house or gardens.

My thoughts are with you all.

IMHO, the bulbs will be okay. It has been so dry that the water is being sucked up quickly and as long as they're planted deep enough, they should just be down there doing their thing.

Martie

I don't know what to do now. I was going to plant my elephant garlic cloves but more rain this weekend is forcasted. Should I wait or plant taking the chance it's too wet and they may rot?

I just cannot rain this weekend! If I don't get out of the house, I will go stark raving mad! Plus, we're having a birthday party for DD with 10 girls, and I was hoping they could get out and do stuff.

Nevermind that we'll only have November to get gardens put to bed (I work all week and get zero garden time except on weekends.) Poopie.

And we're supposed to see SNOW on Tuesday/Wednesday in southern Vermont and New Hampshire. That'll make my commute fun.

Jim

Well, it snowed--and now it is Indian summer. Just gorgeous! I had the air-conditioning on in the car. And the leaves here are finally showing lots of flaming reds. Altho it is not as spectacular a display as usual, it is still beautiful. And I don't ever remember such a late peak of foliage--November! This is one to write down in my records. A strange year.