After the Storms

Sunday, while not rainy, the skies were gloomy and gray -- perfect stay-indoors-and-correct-papers sort of weather.  Which is what I did.  I kept at it until the entire massive stack had been taken care of.  It's always such a weight off of me when I've managed to get caught up with my grading.  Every time I complete a correcting marathon, I vow that I'll keep up with the paperwork forever, so help me God.  We'll see how it goes this time.

I took a break from schoolwork and took the dogs for a walk in the late afternoon.  There was just the smallest dribble of water coming from the pipe that collects the watershed water from our hill and funnels it into the pond. Not the sort of deluge that will fill the pond, I'll admit, but we'll take what we can get. 

On our walk we came across several oak trees that were toppled in Friday night's storm.  This was a surprise, as it didn't seem like the wind was all that strong. 


These two trees were on our neighbor's property with the serpentine path.  We also lost one on the slope behind our garage. 

It's in the natural order of things for every tree to eventually give it up and lie down.  But it's always a bit of a shock to walk about after a storm and come across this sort of destruction -- that must have been some fierce wind coming through.


Today I had to go back to work.  There were several strong rain showers throughout the day and the rain gauge measured 1.08" of rain when I got home. But I didn't need to look at the gauge to know that we'd had a downpour or two while I was away -- coming up the drive, the car's left tires slid into a brand-new rut that was so deep that for a moment I feared we might not scramble out.  That's one impressive chasm, newly carved down our driveway.  I'll take a picture tomorrow.

It's supposed to warm up and dry out for the next week or so.  I'm already scanning the horizon for clouds, looking forward to our next bout of wet weather.