after the deluge

after the deluge,

new bridge across the creek,

gift of floodwater

Pilgrim Creek keeps overflowing its banks. After this morning's deluge, the flood waters deposited a 2x12 piece of lumber, laying it neatly across the creek, anchored by a tree on either side. The angle is a little steep for large animals like myself, but the squirrels will love it, as long as they don't slip on the mucky surface. They're saying the flooding is worse than the Kansas-Missouri Flood of 1951, the Great Mississippi and Missouri Rivers Flood of 1993 or Iowa's Katrina Flood of 2008. It just keeps raining and raining, sometimes a deluge for an hour or two, sometimes just a heavy mist all day. I know a man who grew up in Mossyrock, Washington, in the rain forest between the Pacific coast and the Cascade mountains. The mountains not far inland stop the rain from the ocean from going any further east. Nothing ever got dry and you had to fight your way through gigantic wild blackberry bushes. As soon as he left home he moved to the dry side of the mountains. It's beginning to feel that way here, like the Pacific rain forest, or maybe like Ireland. Everything is green, green, green and wet, wet, wet. The paths in the woods run with water like little creeks or they're filled with mud-bottom pools. It's been great for the berry bushes: strawberries, wild black raspberries, currants, blueberries. Impossible to keep up with weeding, though. The silver lining? Definitely not necessary to water the garden, it's a cinch to pull the weeds up by the roots from the soggy soil and the compost pile is growing gargantuan.