Rain Forest

Harper's Run in the county park downstream

It's official: June 2013 was the wettest June on record here.  We ended the month with 0.5 inches more rain than the second-wettest June.  And, we're 2.5 inches above normal for the year so far.  Except for last Friday (June 28), it has rained part or all of every single day here for the last two weeks, and in between storms the air's has been so humid it's nearly visible.  As you might imagine, everything is sodden, soggy, dripping...you get the point.  If I were through-hiking the Appalachian Trail this year, I'd probably give up.

I decided to venture down to my garden last evening; I really hadn't visited since I planted my tomatoes on Mother's Day--they usually can take care of themselves, the mosquitoes have been ferocious, and the humidity means I start to drip as soon as I open the garden gate.  Thankfully, the weeds weren't as dense as I thought they might be.  However, my plum-shaped Roma tomato plants are all dying, even as they are loaded with tomatoes.  I'm sure it's because of the incredible and relentless humidity.  So far, the Big Boy hybrids still look alright, but they don't produce good tomato sauce like the Romas do.

Sunday morning, before the rain started and it got too warm, Kali and I walked three miles in the county park along "my" creek downstream of "my" preserve.  The trails there are drier than the trails at my preserve, so we walk at the county park when it's too wet here.  We'd planned on four miles, but thunder warned us to shorten our hike, and we got back to the car just before the rain started and washed out the afternoon.  

Kali on the footbridge over Harper's Run

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To my followers, I apologize for not posting much lately.  I have been very ill for the last two weeks and am slowly recovering, which limited my time outdoors.  (Of course, the lousy weather didn't help, either.)  Upcoming, Kali and I will be traveling to Colorado and California for 10 days, so I won't be posting again until mid-July.  I look forward to communicating with you again then!

Drying out

Sunshine (at least a bit of it), at last! We've survived two solid days of clouds, rain (some of it torrential last night), and cold. Today it's windy and partly cloudy with breaks of sun but, most importantly, it has stopped raining.

Yesterday afternoon, driving back to work in the rain after a meeting out in the country, I watched a Great Blue Heron flying over the suburban sprawl. This lonely bird, battling the cold, the rain, and a light headwind, was heading back to its roost for the evening--a gray wraith against a gray sky on a gray and dreary day. I felt so sorry for this bird (and all the other animals that have no choice but to bear the cold, inclement weather with wet fut and wet feathers). I thought about how difficult it must be to find something to eat when the bird needed food the most, yet the streams were running high and the prey were obscured by mud and silt.