"It rained and it rained and it rained. Piglet told himself that never in all his life, and he was goodness knows how old—three, was it, or four?—never had he seen so much rain. Days and days and days."
Fortunately the soul is so free-draining that this was gone within a hour or two of the rain stopping.
Unfortunayely while it continued to rain our land is the recipient of the directed run-off of 4 sections above us - each in turn redirecting water flowing on to theirs from above until it is a single large stream pouring straight through our boundary.
326mm (about 11 inches) fell over 2 days. It was more or less stopped by 0600 on Saturday morning when we were due to set off to Nelson for my last day of in-house Pilates teaching training. However State Highway 6 (to Nelson) was closed between Havelock and Pelorus Bridge and had been since 1900 the previous evening. Some of our neighbours didn't get home last night and we met them coming in when we did eventually go out about 2 hours late - determined to try our luck.In reality, although the road remained officially closed, we were able to navigate the flood damaged parts by following a pilot vehicle which was moving short convoys through a stretch of road littered with great slabs of asphalt - metres square - that had been lifted at the sides and washed/driven by the floods into the road centre.
I'm not sure what Mr B makes of all this... town boy moans about the distance, isolation, and fragility of connections but then I overhear him relating it to friends or family in calls back to the old country and he makes it sound like pioneering adventure of which he is very proud.
All in a 'day in the life of' out here.
Audio:https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/B004EM9CWW?source_code=ORGOR69210072400FU (in case you want to invest in Winnie-the-Pooh audio for yourself or someone you know. We have a "Pooh Story" at bedtime every Sunday evening - have done most of our years together - can pretty much recite them verbatim now but love the cast in this audio version.)
Ooh what fun!
ReplyDeleteShame it wasn’t warm enough to don your togs and have fun playing outside like little kids would
That is a lot of water. Thankfully we too have sandy soil that drains quickly.
ReplyDeleteI hope your home stayed nice and dry. I wonder if you could make a creek bed that will take most of the water. I did that out back and planted water loving plants in it. I also added pebbles and stones. Even when it’s dry it looks lovely and during the winter will take all the water from off the low lying paddock and funnels it into a small dam.
Hari OM
ReplyDeleteWell, time to build a dam or two, or some other form of water catcher! Crikey. It reminds me of the home my parents bought in Turramurra, in the hilly northern suburbs of Sydney. Not quite to that level of run-off, but definitely troublesome during the wets. Father got busy engineering a channel - a proper ditch plus waste piping, some exposed for water feature effect at the top corner, the rest buried and down into the street storm drains. Anyway, don't be giving Mr B any hint that he could kayak those rapids. That'd be a tale to tell the Pommies!!! YAM xx
Serious wet. Glad you made it through in the end
ReplyDeleteYoull have a lot of use for gumboots this winter by the looks of it. Mr B is right, you're pioneers. He can be proud of joining that hardy gang of NZerz.
ReplyDeleteYou've had a lot of damage in your area. I'm glad to hear you made it out
Was Mr B hoping for a peaceful, uneventful retirement? 😁
ReplyDeleteDid you know you'd be living in a river bed? 😉🤣😂
ReplyDeleteThe riverbed is 100 metres away - the shape of the land suggested it. The house site was high and dry.
Deletethe link takes me to a broken egg and "sorry".
ReplyDeletewhere does the rainwater go?
The link might have regional restrictions (Mr B uses a VPN)
DeleteGosh you have had alot here, we got some but not as much as your photos look like you've had, the amount we did get managed to fill up the water tank which was awesome, have a nice week.
ReplyDeleteso this is where our rain went. we are in horrid drought, and out tv guy said this week, we need 11 inches of water to make up for what we should have had already this year. our grass crackles when we walk on it. so glad the rain did not harm your place and ran off quickly. ours does that too, glad you are doing ok OUT THERE in the country
ReplyDelete