River deltas

When we went out to check on our rain gauge yesterday we found no rain in it. None!

That's a mistake not likely to happen again for about a week. We got so much rain today that when we went to check it this afternoon, taking advantage of sunshine that decided to come late for today's party, not until about five, I couldn't take a picture because I was too busy holding my pants up to keep them out of the water oozing around my feet in our lawn. I shudder to think (remember) what it was like before we did all that work in the backyard and rerouted the drainage. Calvin tells me it might have been like a big river delta and I think he might actually be a bit disappointed by our new and improved drainage.

Jon's dad tells me that this spring has been significantly wetter than usual, and our neighbor, the one with the white fence that works so well in so many of our garden pictures, tells me that it is supposed to remain cooler and wetter than usual right up through June. To me this is the slayer of hope. Every week I click that 10-day outlook button on the weather page hoping to see at least some numbers in the 70s in the near future. Now I guess I can stop clicking, then if we do get some decent weather it will be like a fantastic surprise.

Today we woke up to skies so dismal that we had to turn lights on in the house. We read books to each other and played a newish (to us) game called Where in the World, but artificial light in the morning is depressing, so we packed up and headed out to run our weekly errands. A pharmacy and two grocery stores later we had a week's worth of food and supplies and the rain had just stopped and no lights were needed in the house. We scanned and stored our purchases, practiced piano, played with Legos, Playmobil, and dinosaurs, and marked Calvin's favorite volcanoes on a world map (yes, I said favorite volcanoes). I ran, Calvin read Nate the Great in a weak afternoon light. Then two hours later the sun actually came out and we braved the squishy yard (the one Calvin thinks might have been like a river delta had we not broken our backs in hours of labor last summer) to read the rain gauge.