Today started out cloudy, but by 9:00 am or so the clouds were gone and the sun was out again. I think we got up to about 57° F by late afternoon.
But Tuesday and Wednesday were wet, wet, wet! Tuesday started of cloudy, and I just managed to get Mo around the yard after lunch before the rain started. And once it started, it was pretty steady for about the next 30 hours.
 |
| Slow but steady rain caused the National Weather Service to issue several flash flood warnings. |
By noon on Wednesday, the yard was a mix of of little streams and ponds as the ground had become so saturated that it just couldn't soak up any more.
By late afternoon, we could hear the roar of Little Piney Creek and RAF wanted to drive down the road to have a look.
(Sorry about the shaky video...that's just how my old hands are anymore....)
 |
| Flooded hay field |
 |
| Flooded Slough |
My sister said her rain gauge showed 3.88" just before 6:00 pm on Wednesday evening. It rained off and on for a few more hours, but I'm not sure what we ended up with when it was all said and done. (Update 2/10/2023: Sister said the total rainfall came to 4.12".)
While there was a lot of water everywhere, it was by no means the most flooding we've ever had. The rain came down slowly over a longer period of time, which meant a lot of it soaked into the ground before it actually started to flood. And because it was a slow rain, it had more time to drain downstream. I've actually seen the water in Little Piney up to within about a foot of the bottom of the bridge, which also meant that water in the slough was high enough that it flooded over the road. Even though this flooding wasn't nearly that serious, it was quite impressive still.
When I checked my email on Tuesday, I had a message from Stark Brothers Nursery telling me they had shipped my Montmorency Pie Cherry tree and that it would arrive on Thursday! Not an ideal time to be planting a new tree, but sometimes you do what you have to do, right?
So FedEx brought the package this morning, right on schedule.
 |
| Dwarf bare root Montmorency Pie Cherry tree. |
I knew they planned to ship it sometime in February, and had already dug a hole in anticipation of its arrival. But I wasn't counting on the rain...even by late this afternoon, the hole was still full of water.
So RAF helped me dig a new hole a few feet away from the water-filled one, and I set the little tree in the new hole and packed the muddy soil back in around its roots. I topped the muddy dirt off with some partially rotted cow manure, put a cage around it, and called it good.
 |
| The little cherry tree, settled into its new home. |
So far, I have resisted the temptation to call my backyard a "food forest," but with the addition of yet another tree, maybe that's what it's turning into!
The cherry tree wasn't my only delivery this week. Yesterday afternoon, a new weapon in my war on invasive plants arrived.
 |
| My new DeWalt electric chainsaw. |
It seems to be pretty solid, although it's made with a lot of plastic. I've not yet had a chance to put the battery in and test it out, but I think Saturday will be a perfect day to get back out in the woods and cut and treat those privet trunks that I've been working on. I'm excited to see how much I can get cleared out now before the sap starts rising.
I have another order of plants from Food Forest Nursery in West Fork that is expected to ship the week of March 6. As I was doing a bit more research about whether these plants are juglone tolerant -because I want to plant the Serviceberry (Amelanchier aborea) near the black walnut tree - I happened to notice that privet is listed as one of the plants that is sensitive to juglone. DING DING DING DING! Now I know where I'm going to plant a bunch of the walnuts that are piled up out in the yard - once I've cut the privet and treated the stumps with herbicide, I'm going to bury walnuts in the woods! I can only hope that privet is really, really sensitive to juglone, and that the black walnuts sprout, grow, and kill every dang privet plant within 50 feet!
Back to my orders though. Today I also got my box of LED shop lights that I ordered from Amazon. Just in time too. The tomato seeds have started coming up, and it won't be long until it's time to separate the peppers out into their own pots so I'm going to need more grow lights! While these are advertised as "shop lights" they seem like they'll work as grow lights. They're very lightweight too, which I like. Setting those up will be another project for this weekend!