I'm Melting, I'm Melting!...

 So last Saturday, even though it was well below freezing, I had Spring fever.  And since I didn't have anywhere to travel to, for the first weekend in at least two months, I did some spring cleaning. 

Sure it didn't seem like much that I did, but it felt good.  A cleaned out lazy Susan, at least 7 loads of laundry, a cleaned out bathroom cabinet and yet no sewing.  shoot.  Maybe today over lunch.  I've got my bestie's jeans that need a bit of mending before I go see her tonight and remember those little fabric cell phone holders that I made a ton of several years ago?  Jen got one and still uses it. It has sprung a leak and a little rice is coming out.  So I need to mend it as well. 

I also have a sewing meeting this weekend that I haven't attended since November.  I SEW want to go!!!  And then maybe an afternoon trip to go see my dad.  I haven't seen him since the funeral.

It's only Thursday and I've got my Saturday packed...

And with all the snow melting all over Iowa, this was my view this morning.

Normally you wouldn't see the water from here.  It's flooded pretty bad...

The last time that it flooded worse than this and affected us was in 1996.  Ryan was really little and Maddy was, I guess, two.   I might have the wrong year on this page...  Oh well.  It was a bad flood.  

Our golden retriever, Katie, saw the open deck door and bolted to go outside.  The creek had risen up to an inch of our basement window and our deck was now a dock.  Katie jumped into the flood waters and Robb had to jump in and drag her back.  Then go get a tetanus shot.

Robb's parents were visiting at that time and we joked how his dad had parted the waters for us, as we were the only house on the block with no water in our basement.  Just a damp spot in the corner.  

The house to the south had a flooded basement with lots of dead fish and the one to the north had a basement full up to the top basement step of sewage.  Wow, did we luck out!

The snow and ice is ALMOST melted off my herb garden this year and I'm anxious to plant my new lemon balm seeds.  I've been waiting for this moment all of the winter of 2018-19...

Life is an adventure! Then you rest...

I am back to work today. My Stay-Ca-Tion was great! More on the other things we did in some other post. Today I'm going to talk about yesterday!

We decided that the girls and I would go on a picnic at a park about 30 minutes away. So we packed a lunch, made sure we had bug spray and sun screen and headed out! And I'm going to apologize right now! My camera had some funky smeary thing in the middle of the lens the whole time! shoot.

Since the flooding took down most of Central Iowa, I had to do some creative back road driving to find the park. The girls had been there with Robb a while back, but I'd never been. We arrived and found that the lower part of the park closed to cars because of the flooding. Darn! So we hiked it.

Yep pretty smart huh? The only ones in the park...

We walked down the road that wove back and forth down the densely wooded hillside until we finally came to the bottom where the swollen creek that usually trickles through the park was. It was still rushing, but not as bad as it had been, judging from the silt and sludge all along the parking lots and picnic tables.

The only other people we came upon was a young hiking couple that warned us about water over the road up ahead and that we'd be fine in our flip flops. The water was rushing over the roads and concerned with drowning, I went first just to see how strong the current was. The water was about 6-12 inches deep and the current was strong, but we'd be ok. The girls and I held hands and walked slowly across carrying our shoes in some cases.

As we walked through the valley of trees, water and mud, different movies came to mind. Maddy and Meri said that this reminded them of Jurassic Park and expected a dinosaur to come running around a corner. A small wooden bridge reminded Maddy of Harpers Island and she almost wouldn't cross it. With absolutely no one around, I felt like we'd fallen into some apocalyptic land and we were the only ones left in the ruins. At other times I felt like I was in the set of Planet of the Apes. Weird feeling! whoa.

What a mucky mucky mess! The park people have a LOT of work to do to clean this up! We'll be back so I can see it all again in it's full glory.

We forded two streams until we came to a third and I wondered if the road actually went all the way around or if we were just going to have to backtrack a ton... We decided at the silted over parking lot to go back across the last flooded road and hike straight up the hill to Inspiration point that we'd passed on the way down.

It was a very long hike up and my heart was going a mile a minute.

After several breaks, stops and starts, we finally made it up to the Inspiration Point sign again where I'd taken a before pic of the girls... So I took an after pic too. Meri glistened in sweat this time and they both felt miserable after the climb. No way was I going to take a picture of me!

I think if we did this hike once a week, I'd be to my goal weight pretty darn quick! I just don't think I want to get to that goal quite yet if it means a heart attack... and more climbing...

And the rain came falling, falling, falling...

We have had thunderstorms the last two - three nights and it's wreaking havoc with our town and neighboring communities. Flooding galore. One of our neighbors had their basement flooded and lost all their carpet and some of their furniture that they weren't able to move up immediately. Another suddenly has a dock instead of a deck two days in a row...The college town nearby has been hit even worse. I can't believe they built a brand new Walmart in the everyone knew it flood zone! I may never buy groceries from them again! Ok - kidding... My son is a vegetarian and their tofu is cheap. *GAC TOFU!*

Anyway, water water everywhere.

With a usually dinky creek behind our house, but it's pretty swollen now, I can really relate to the following phrase...

Lord willing and the creek don't rise.

We should be ok, but the people who bought our old house across the creek, may not be so lucky this time...

Memories of a mucky Father's Day!

It was Father's Day 1996 and it pouring down rain, for several days already. Robb's parents had been visiting and left to go home but couldn't because the road they wanted to travel on was flooded. They came back to our house to stay. That night, the tiny little creek which normally rested a couple hundred feet back in the woods behind our house crept up toward it. Apparently it had been raining even harder up north.

We awoke just a little while later with a phone call from one of Robb's concerned brothers who had been watching the flooding reports on tv and saw that our town was in the news. We went out on the deck and took a look at our sudden lake front property. Instead of a deck, we had a dock... It was kind of cool until you realized what kind of scum was swimming past you and how many of your neighbors were suffering because of it. Mistakenly leaving the deck door open slightly. Our golden retriever decided to go down to the yard and ran down the steps into the swirling water. Robb jumped in after her and standing waist deep in the rushing water dragged her back to the deck. He went for a tetanus shot the next day.

A view from our deck across the neighbors yards.

We weren't the only ones up for the rest of the night. Our neighbors to the north had their basement filling up with sewage. The people to the south of us had a nice big basement window overlooking their back yard and the creek had broken through. All the houses on our street with their backs to the creek got water in their basement. Ours was dry. Robb likes to think that his dad, a Methodist minister, had stood on the back deck parting the water. I prefer to think that God had led us to purchase this house that only had a small basement window on the back side, but we could both be right I guess. Water came up to within an inch of coming in the window but didn't come through.

That was where my garden was and you shouldn't even be able to see the creek from here...

The water finally went down the next day and we spent that day helping neighbors haul things out of their basements. YUCK! Bleaching down walls and scooping out creek mud. Dead fish everywhere.

a neighbors house. Check out the wet bricks. That was how high the water had been during the night...

The railroad timbers that I'd used to frame my garden were several yards down stream. They were heavy! We managed to get them back to our yard balanced on the back of our rider lawn mower. Our neighbors shed had been moved to the next yard down. Weeks later, the cherry tomato plants that I had planted in my little garden were sprouting and growing in our neighbors yards as well as mine.

Me and my boy and his armadillo, resting on the couch for just a little bit that next afternoon.

With the snow melting so fast right now, I'm seeing news on tv that reminds of this time vividly. We're expecting more rain today and the snowdrift on our patio has visibly gone down a couple feet since yesterday. Parts of our front yard are showing yucky brownish green grass. Since then, we've moved across the creek and live on a hill so the creek won't bother us at all if we get a repeat of 1996.

And for the sake of the people on the other side of the creek, we're praying, God-willing, that the creek don't rise!