Feast or Famine! Drought or Flood!

For anyone who has already looked at Stefanie's blog, you know we received a bit of rain this past weekend (actually, Friday and Saturday). For the past year to 18 mos, we and the rest of Georgia have been having a severe drought. Atlanta has been even worse, with their water supply dwindling to only a few weeks worth of water left in the reservoirs. The winter months around here are traditionally the driest months of the year, so when we had these storms come through, we were surprised and elated (unfortunately I don't think Stef and Danny were quite so elated--check out their blog of their flooding).

According to our rain gauge we got about 7 inches in about a 32 hour time period (and I heard another family in a nearby town measured 11 inches of rain in the same time frame). Unfortunately for the folks in Atlanta, the system bypassed them and they got nothing. Even stranger, 20 miles south of us in Monticello, Florida, they also got nothing! But, needless to say, we got lots of rain. Thankfully, our poor parched pond is beginning to fill again, although it has a LONG way to go. When we first moved here the water was just shy of the dock, and about 12 feet deep. With the storms, we now have about 3 ft of water in our pond. We're grateful, but sad not to see the catfish greet us when we come out. Once we feel the water in the pond will be around for awhile, we will restock it with fish again.

Here are some pictures:

The pond is beginning to refill--note all the long weeds growing along the sides! All of these weeds used to be UNDER water.The top of this marker is 10 feet.Ginger and Riley taking time to explore around the pond. Coco was camera shy.

Pepper preferred just to sit on the dock and observe

The best part of all of this (besides it starting to green-up around here) was that Sunday was BEAUTIFUL!!! It ws about 71 degrees, sunny, and clear. We opened up the whole house--every window was open and every ceiling fan was running. It was wonderful to get some fresh air!! We are so grateful for the rain and the beautiful weather--too bad that we're destined to get that awful $%#@* humidity back in just a few short months.