Rain?

For six of the last seven days we have had overcast with showers and thunderstorms, some of the storms well after dark.  Today was the first semi-sunny day.

How do you folks on the Wet coast and that dear tree herder on Skye deal with all the rain???

I was starting to get a little touch of cabin fever, I even tried taking a morning and afternoon nap!!!

The seven day forecast has more rain for central Virginia, yowza.  Just sayin, could've used some this rain in June and July!

Peace

Hi Deane - you get used to it! We once had eighteen months here when it rained at some point every day! I know because we had a big load of logs delivered (wet) and were trying to get dry time to cut them and stack them away.

I started a thread about  things to do on a wet afternoon - open to more suggestions though! As the weather turns colder making cakes is a good plan. Pearl has some interesting suggestions here. I was also going to try making some traditional British meat pies - pork pies and scotch pies. I just need to work out what to make with the excess pork gelatine.

I deal with rain the same way I deal with snow: Extra lights so it doesn't feel so dark, and keep busy working. I always have a list of what can be done indoors. I sew, so my sewing only gets done on rainy or snowy days.

Nancy's list was great, she missed baking bread and making good soup with it :D

Experimenting with ANY new skill or recipe is always good. What do you not know howto do? Go to thrift store, look at stuff, does any of it catch your eye? How about knitting or crocheting? Bet they have yarn and needles and hooks for cheap! All skills are useful, learning one changes how you look at the next, even if you never do the first one again.

Rain gear and good boots.

I have about 2 hours of animal care in the back field regardless of the weather, but I will time shift a little if I think there might be a lull, and definitely do the minimum if I think the weather will be less scuzzy the next day. We have a clothesline near the woodstove and a dehumidifier we will run if it's too warm to run the stove. The dehumidifier water gets saved for washing clothes in, so at least that's a bit of an offset.

I also have lots of indoor projects that I'd love to work on. The problem is lack of good workshop space... sigh...

I also try to be very flexible with my goals. No rain today, so I *really* wanted to get my west compost bin rebuilt, a project that's been percolating along for at least 3 weeks. But I'm a senior - I get hurt more easily and take longer to heal - so when my body said, "Enough, you got 2 walls into place and the third is halfway from the shed where the panel building was done, to the compost area - just quit!" I listened. If I'm not out of energy after getting the ducks and chickens tucked into bed, I may just take that last panel the rest of the way, but I will wait and see.

Apologies - I now have rain envy.  So far this year, till yesterday, we have had only 240mm - but 19mm overnight (OH joy!)  Usually we average about 750 mm, but fingers crossed there may be some monsoon feed-in to come.   NB we used to count our rain in points where there were 100 points to the inch.

I am envious as we are usually in a drought situation.

I like to sit and what the rain.  I like to observe what happens when it rains.  What parts of my property get rain washing across and what parts get standing rain.

I also like to take long walk when it is not raining.

As Nancy mentioned cooking helps.  I like to cook new to me recipes.

I like to make to do lists.

Just reading the forum says it all.

I don't want to sound like a broken record (for you younger folks-I don't want to sound like I'm stuck in an endless loop), but we had more rain this afternoon and early evening and it's still raining now.
There were also tornado warnings earlier this evening south of my location, near the NC line.  I understand that the flooding was bad in and near Asheville.  I do hope for the best for all those in the area, I think both interstate highways (I26 & I40) are now closed due to the damage.

Peace

Deane Adams wrote:I don't want to sound like a broken record (for you younger folks-I don't want to sound like I'm stuck in an endless loop), but we had more rain this afternoon and early evening and it's still raining now...

I hear you - I've been told that hurricanes are moving more slowly under certain conditions, so they drop more rain over any particular spot they wander over.

In general, we've turned our swamps and wet meadows into parking lots, so they no longer soak up as much extra rain as they did 100 years ago.

Permaculture tries to reverse that - slow, spread and sink - but we need more people doing that, and having not just a rain "barrel" but a whole huge rain tank to collect roof water so it doesn't all run off. Better topsoil planted with a polyculture, instead of grass.

Too late for this storm, but not too soon to start planning for the next one. I saw a video about a place in the northern US that had taken a park by the river and designed it so that if the river flooded, the park would flood first. The swing sets were well under water, but the businesses were saved because the park was large enough, and turned into enough of a lake, that the river peaked and started to subside before getting to road height.  They worked *with* nature. The accepted that they had to work cooperatively with the river, rather than trying to rule over it.