2013, a Year Filled With Rain

It has rained here so much this summer and everything has gotten so overgrown, it has become hazardous to our health just to get from one area of the yard to another. If you have ever been here to Big Creek, you already know how thickly everything is planted and how lavishly it grows even on a normal year. Big Creek itself rambles and boils adjacent to our property racing itself down the mountain towards Lake Blue Ridge and adds to the available water supply. Everything has grown a surprising amount this year and the humidity which is considerable can be oppressive.

 Big Creek Road, headed north, after the pavement ends is nothing more than a brilliant green tunnel as it twists and turns, following the disappearing creek around each successive turn. It is beginning to rain here again this afternoon and more precipitation is predicted for later this week. We are living in a rain forest and while I love it, some problems do surface: mainly snakes and mildew! After all those years of drought, mildew is almost a welcome guest. The moss encircling the trees, rocks and plants has never been thicker and shows no sign of slowing down. As much as I did not want to, a couple of weeks ago we had to close up the house and turn on the air conditioning. The furniture was turning a bluish green color and Paige, (the charming young woman who cleans the inside of the house every two weeks) was hinting that we were going to have to furnish her with a weed eater if the mildew continued to grow at the rate it was going! 

All the doors and cabinets in the house had absorbed so much humidity it was difficult closing any of them and once closed were impossible to open! The trees have produced so much foliage that limbs are cracking, breaking off and falling to the ground. We have had to have four large trees taken down so far this year with the possibility of more to come. One hemlock died from the adelgid insect infestation and was threatening to fall on the garden house and chicken coup. The trunk was larger than the hood of our Honda and we had no choice but to take it down. Have you had a large tree taken down lately? Well be prepared for a big shock as to what it costs. 

What I should have done was have the wood cut into planks and started building an ark!