Rain Rain GO AWAY!

We have waited and waited to seed our yard, and plant some things because it has just been too hot. We picked out some beautiful trees, plants, bushes, flowers and after September 15th, went nuts planting. Everything looked great. The yard was freshly graded, we had many loads of dirt and we had a perfect empty canvas. Ryan and I built a pretty stone wall, and planted herbs. He was very proud of his hard work. I was having a dinner party on Wednesday night (last week) and the last loads of mulch went in by about 5 pm. It looked great! We could just imagine how nice it would all look once the seed filled in the yard. Sigh, it WAS great. Then, just as I was setting up my cocktail tables on the front porch...

drip, drip, drip. No worries, a little rain would be great for all of the plantings. But drip......drip........drip turned to drip..drip...drip..boom. Then the skies parted and we got a flash flood. The water started coming down the hill, gathering speed, and volume. It washed the new plantings down the hills, and the mulch, and the many truck loads of nice dirt, and giant sections of sod. The street was filled with the mudslide and the lot across the street was the beneficiary of much new dirt, mud, mulch and seed. Nick spent the evening before my party with his snow shovel digging the mud out of the street. I moved the party inside. It was a great time. I got to use my dining room for the first time, and my nice new linens from our Provence trip...yes Mom, I ironed them :-).

The day after the party it was back to work trying to get everything back in place.... but the rains just kept coming. I spent the afternoon after the morning rain scraping and sweeping the street. Ugh. What a mess. By Friday, we'd had about enough of the rain. Baseball practices were cancelled, games, cancelled and we wanted to see some sun! On Saturday, it appeared to be drying out. We got the wheelbarrow out, scraped muck and I re-seeded portions of the yard. We had an erosion control company come out and build a silt fence to stop everything from running into the street. We replanted the plants and bushes which has washed out in the heavy rains. It was looking better, and we were starting to feel like it was getting under control. We sat down to enjoy a beer, when the skies started to get a bit dark for the hour. Ugh.... not again.... a 15 minute burst of torrential rain! The rivers of mud picked up speed, gathering the 8 bags of grass seed, and mud, and anything in its path..... all running down the hill. The erosion control silt fencing is holding back a swamp of muck. Maybe we should get some pigs? On Monday, I went to Lowe's and got more seed. Finally, the sun was peeking out of the clouds. Hooray! Baseball was back on... 2 games Tuesday night how exciting! At the end of the games, as the boys were lining up to give "fives" we noticed some fireworks in the distance. Noooooo, it couldn't be thunder and lightning could it? We made it home, got snuggled up in our beds just in time to hear the storm. Back to replanting and seeding today.

The lot across the street is going to have the most lush lawn around!

Here are a few shots of some of our erosion and swamp area.... lovely, don't you think?