Sunken gardens, suddenly

Corn and sunflowers--everything else is submerged.

Last night we could have launched our canoe at the edge of our lower meadow, paddled above the submerged cabbages in the garden, and then been swept downstream to certain doom in a roaring, raging river.

The sudden deluge that caused the flash flood didn't last long and at first it didn't seem to do much damage. A tree fell across the road, so my husband went out with a chainsaw to help the neighbors remove it, walking down the driveway, across the bridge, and up the road around the curve. Within 40 minutes after he returned, that entire route was under water.

Our house is well up the hill and out of danger,  but the garden shed got pushed off its moorings and sat there aslant in the current. We stood in the midnight darkness where the driveway disappeared under the water and heard occasional bumping sounds as floating debris hit our bridge, which was kind of reassuring--the bridge was still there! We certainly couldn't see the bridge, or the road, or the far shore of our new river, and only the corn and sunflowers stood tall enough to mark the location of the gardens.

 

Listing...a little more water and it's afloat.

The gardens! I looked into the murky waves and wondered whether all our hard work was getting washed downstream. What could possibly survive all that rushing water? 


But this morning things look much brighter. The garden is muddy but few plants washed away, and the garden shed wasn't damaged although everything inside got thoroughly soaked. A chunk of driveway disappeared, leaving a long parabola of gravel in our neighbor's hayfield, so I won't be driving anywhere until our gravel guy delivers.  Our son spent the night in town since our road was underwater, but by the time he comes home today things could be pretty much back to normal.

Blackberry patch on the right; pepper patch submerged.

Over the next few days we'll need to remove debris from the bridge, reshape the driveway, clean out and reposition the shed, and see what we can salvage from the garden, but we survived! Showers of blessings, rivers of thanks!

Damaged driveway.

Debris on the bridge and washed-out bank alongside the driveway.

The view from the road: the creek is still about eight feet above normal today, but last night it reached all the way across the meadow to the red shed.

Muddy cabbage, anyone?