Taken a beatin'...

We are not the only ones to have experienced rainfall-related problems here in Texas.  There are a lot of people who got hit by the recent rains much worse than we did. A couple who are friends of ours had to be evacuated by air boat from their home. They sustained far more damage to their property than we could imagine. So as you look at the video and the pictures here, you will see that the rains and water are pretty intense, and yet we were the lucky ones.

The video is a mashup automatically generated by Google.  The two-gallon bucket, with only half of its top exposed, filled up in the time it will take you to watch the video.

To be sure, the rains have produced disheartening results. The temperatures have risen in May, and have revealed that all of the warm weather grass seed that I had sown previously has been beaten out of the ground and washed downstream. The green cool-weather grasses have gone dormant, which is not a pretty sight. I now have two weeks left to sow some native grasses in order for them to take hold and provide some protection against erosion for the rest of the summer and into the early fall. I found that I have a significant amount of hardscape work to do in order to protect our property from future rains.   This is an unexpected expense, adding to us being over 50% of budget already on landscaping.

You take the bad with the good, and this is certainly part of the bad. We know what we need to improve, without a doubt. This season has been very educational. I'm certain that we can make the corrections and additions to our landscaping that will help us better survive such torrential rains again. One thing is certain, I'm going to put a snorkel on that Jeep of mine.

The right bank (looking downstream from the top of our drive) looks pretty well behaved...

It picks up volume and speed has it runs downhill...

But it is of no consequence compared to what is coming off the right of way and from the community culvert...

Which also pushes larger amounts of water through the anterior woods as well...

And cuts deeply as it makes its turn downhill on the left bank...

Which propels the water downhill and aids in filling the creek which took out Pam's car a couple of weeks earlier.

We are grateful, for the water is away from the house and all are safe within.