Rain Overnight

Almost 2 inches of rain yesterday and last night, which should have mostly soaked in (maybe not in the burn scar) since the grass coverage we’ve nurtured has increased resistance to flood and erosion.  Grass is really good at holding the soil and slowing moderate flow to slow: it cleans water and prevents damage.   So it’s time to go out and take a look (since there are no incoming rain bands on radar now)  and assess what we need to do as the land dries out bit by bit.  I’m not going out on the fire scar yet, since it’s likely to be very muddy and I don’t know how deep–my tall “flood boots” are much heavier than the shorter rubber boots I’ve been wearing.  This will take an hour to an hour and a half, to cover the areas I need to cover.   Come spring I’ll definitely be ordering a short-grass turf mix for the maintenance paths–anything we want to keep mowed for safety–and other areas that need to be snake-safer for walking or riding a horse on.  That will make post-rain events easier to deal with.  (All those things in the books about how tiring it is to walk in mud of various depths come from walking in mud, much of it on this mud, but some also from walking trails in mud elsewhere.)

Horses this morning looked at me with scorn and annoyance, because they got fed (gasp!!) 45 minutes late.  And, and, and…it was only hay.  And it wasn’t as much hay as those hay-bellies wanted (“Is that ALL?  Are you trying to starve us into submission?”   Nobody’s asking you to submit to anything right now but not grabbing hay out of my arms.  Back off.  “Mean, mean, horrible person.”  It was only rain, and warm rain at that, and you are welcome to go out and nibble grass when you’ve eaten the hay.   “You don’t CARE about us.”   This, from horses nose deep in enough hay to partly stand on, and munching away, but speaking with their rolled eyes and ear positions and swishing of tails and deep blubbery sighs.  You didn’t want to wait for hay nets to be made up.  Just eat your breakfast and let me go in and eat mine.  “You don’t need breakfast like we do.  You’re fat enough.”   Pot & kettles, ponies; you’re more overweight than I am.  I love you dearly but I need my eggs and you already have your hay.  (I ate breakfast more than an hour after they had theirs.)

5 thoughts on “Rain Overnight

  1. No flow across the Near Meadow, only a small “flow shadow” downstream of the property, which means trees on the old ditch dripped into the ditch, but nothing else did. It’s warm and steamy, so I wore shorts but didn’t want to get sunburned again as the clouds are thinning and the sun burning through….so a very short tour of the lower Near Meadow and north horse lot (the one horses are locked out of and have been since the day of the fire.

    R- did a temporary fix of the fence I cut to let fire trucks in if the fire spread toward town. We need to get some rock to fill the holes that years ago the city guys dug in that lot for some unknown reason, and then put in a good fence and gate big enough for fire trucks.

    1. Ours was the warm tropical rain, but we do get (used to get) the cold shivery sort in winter. You do get the much shorter winter days (ours are shorter in winter but not as short as yours), which I experienced the time I went to England in January. That whole trip was solid Dickens

  2. The horse conversation has me chuckling on the way to the kitchen for my lunch.
    I’m enjoying your narrative about the land coming back from the fire.

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