Glug, glug, glug

– Posted in: Hardscaping and Projects, Weather
5 comments

Water, water everywhere - photo by Cadie taken February 2006
Upstate NY is drowning! At least, my county is. It’s been raining all week, so the ground was saturated, and then this afternoon it really started raining! Must be the kind of downpour they get in Texas all the time. I can’t even check how fast it was coming down, because everyone in town is doing the same thing and the weather sites won’t load. What’s causing landslides and washing out roads is “just” runoff, but runoff like I’ve never seen. Yet even with our high water table we are doing all right, because years ago my DH built a pond several hundred feet uphill and directly behind our house. This pond has been a great disappointment to us because it has a slow leak and has never held water longterm:
Empty pond in September 2006 - photo by Justin
But in a situation like this it acts like a reservoir and redirects the runoff to the edge of the property:
The pond, in one of its rare filled appearances - Photo by Cadie March 2004
I’m feeling very blessed right now.

Please note: None of the photos in this post are recent. They are for illustrative purposes only. It was dark when all the excitement was going on; I couldn’t have photographed it if I wanted to. And there’s no snow on the ground at the moment. I’ve mentioned it before, so I’m not sure if I need to mention it again: hover your cursor over each photo for the date and other info. I’m sure there’s a way to make captions for the photos, but I haven’t figured it out yet.–KP

About the Author

Kathy Purdy is a colchicum evangelist, converting unsuspecting gardeners into colchicophiles. She gardens in rural upstate NY, which used to be USDA Hardiness Zone 4 but is now Zone 5. Kathy’s been writing since 4th grade, gardening since high school, and blogging since 2002. Find her on Instagram as kopurdy.

In its own way, frost may be one of the most beautiful things to happen in your garden all year . . . Don’t miss it. Like all true beauty, it is fleeting. It will grace your garden for but a short while this morning. . . . For this moment, embrace frost as the beautiful gift that it is.

~Philip Harnden in A Gardener’s Guide to Frost: Outwit the Weather and Extend the Spring and Fall Seasons

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kerri November 17, 2006, 10:22 pm

Kathy, you probably saw during your visit to my blog today that our road flooded again last night. All was well this morning though. There sure is plenty of water in the river just below us. It’s hard to imagine a dry year at the moment!

Kathy Purdy November 17, 2006, 9:21 pm

Cyndy, I kow you are right by the river. Does that ever get scary? Have you ever had to evacuate?

Ki, it’s so crazy. As a gardener I’m still scarred by the memories of the dry years, when there wasn’t enough water in any reservoir. Now we can’t give it away fast enough!

Ki November 17, 2006, 7:19 pm

Hey, you guys are sending all that water downstream to us NJerseyers and we’re about to drown šŸ˜‰ I just heard on NPR that the Delaware river commission has told NY to release water from their dams so in case it rain again the reservoirs will have enough capacity to hold back the water. Apparently NY is doing just that but the flood gates are too small making it a long process to draw down the reservoirs. Apparently they foresee releasing water until June!!! Yowww.

cyndy November 17, 2006, 6:26 pm

Glad the pond held it’s own in the downpours- our river is high and muddy, but we are high and dry…it has been quite the year for flooding in our neck of the woods…

Carol November 16, 2006, 9:56 pm

It’s also raining in Central Indiana. Wet, cold, dreary, blah weather. The ground is saturated. No hope now of digging any new beds. The ground will freeze in a few weeks. But, I’m thankful no flood warnings and no tornadoes!