I guess you would call me a rogue gardener. I have an acre and half of hill, much of which is wooded, where deer, squirrels as big as cats, raccoons, a groundhog and at least one resident barn snake roam about freely. There’s also a mother fox that often brings her kits/pups out to visit. I garden for fun but the one thing I get serious about is invasive plants.

Syble

Monday, August 10, 2009

"Water, Water Everywhere & Not A Drop To Drink"

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is one of my favorite classic tales and on August 5th the "Water, water everywhere..." described the scene outside my office building.

I was on vacation for a week which was really great. On Monday August 4th I came back to work. That was just a regular workday.

Then came Tuesday, August 5th. The two pictures below show the stree in front of my office building about an hour after I arrived.












As I was driving in there was this black cloud that was directly in front of me. It was black and there was a green look to it - as a child I was taught that if the cloud looked "green" it almost always meant that there was going to be hail involved. Anyway, still a good distance from work I considered going back home because there was this "feeling". Next time I will head my "feeling". I arrived at the office at 8:20 am. Within minutes it was almost as dark as night outside and I could hear hail hitting the windows. Then came the rain - 6.5 (16.5 centimeters)inches of rain in about an hour. We watched it flood the street in front of the building and then it blew the covers off the sewers and it was like a huge wave that moved higher and higher until it was up over the parking meters.

My car, along with many more was in the way of this wave of sewage, and needless to say flooded. By the time I realized the water wasn't going to stop before it got into the parking lot I couldn't get to the car to move it. Well anyway my car made national news on the weather channel.

The fire department had to bring in boats to evacuate some of the people. My sister and daughter had to be evacuated to the second floor of the building next door, then after is stopped raining and the water began to go down the grounds people took them out to a local business so that they could get a ride home.

Needless to say, my car has been totaled.

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