When it rains, it pours!

Rick and I live in Northern California, and for the last few weeks, we have been drenched. We’ve needed rain desperately over the last few years, but now, the storms are coming, one after another, soaking the flood plains (where we live), saturating mountainsides and filling creeks, streams, rivers and reservoirs. We’ve had days of high tides, rivers above flood stage, mud slides and flash floods.

I find myself praying frequently: Thank You, Lord. We need the rain and the snow pack in the Sierras, but please give us a day or two break between the storms. Just so the water soaks in. Please watch out for those people near the rivers and streams or living on hillsides.

I love to listen to the rain, but lately, I lie awake listening to it pounding on the roof as the wind howls and I pray the large redwood near our new home won’t topple on us or our neighbor. It was planted over thirty years ago, which means it survived the floods of 1985 and 1995.

Our backyard floods whenever the storms bring in two or more inches at one time. The ground soaks up the water quickly (usually in a day or two), but we need knee-high rubber boots when we go outside. Our dog, Sarge, looks at the whipping redwoods and water he’ll have to wade through to get to his potty area, and then looks at me. Are you seriously going to make me go out in that?

We’ll need to find someone who knows how to redirect water, but I’m not even sure what kind of expert that might be. Anyone reading this blog who does know, please tell me. I’d never heard of a French drain until a few weeks ago!

The pouring rain will eventually stop. The fields show God-green. The frogs sing a hallelujah chorus in the pond behind the fence. Some nights are so clear and crisp, you feel like you could reach up and touch a star.

When the rains stop, we can go out and do the clean-up work, finish pruning the grapevines, and plant for spring. The Northern California drought is now officially over. We pray now some of the bounty we’re receiving to drift south and east to replenish the aquifers and watersheds of Central and Southern California.