Walsingham River

  When I left for work this morning I went out to try and read the rain gauge, but I was having trouble seeing where the water line was. I wanted to check it because the rain woke me up at 5:15. It was coming down hard, very hard, and that lasted for more then 30 minutes.

  So took off my socks, grabbed my water shoes, rolled up my pants and went wading. Rain like that usually floods the side yards and often the front yard too. This morning there was standing water in the back yard, too. (More then 60 minutes later Edward said it was still flooded.)  I usually call the yard Lake Morgan at times like these.

  I couldn't see the water line becuase the water was over the top of the measurable area of the gauge. It’s a five inch gauge. I had to dump some out into a container, then dump out the 5 inches it could measure and pour the rest back in to get it measured accurately.  It had six inches this morning. I had dumped that gauge before dark last night. I didn’t figure it would fill again, but I knew we were expecting more.

  The rainfall rate reached between 2.5-3 inches an hour before dawn. Most of the rain in that gauge was from 4 am as it just kept raining harder and harder.

  The grand total in our gauge.  11 inches in about 30 hours from Tropical Storm Colin.

  Thank the powers-that-be we 1) live on a “hill” (55 ft above sea level) (this is Pinellas County, that's high), 2) Florida has sandy soil that drains, 3) I live on said sandy soil and 4) my neighborhood drains well.  I can’t say the same for other places in the area.  The phone went off at 6:10 with a flash flood warning right after I got up.  

  Driving in wasn’t too bad, though it was raining pretty good.  It faked me out since it had let up at the house. I drove into heavier showers. The retaining ponds in the area are overflowing.

  And this is the ditch behind the house, otherwise known as "Walsingham River” when we get rain like this. That much rain makes for an impressive show.  We’re pretty sure the far side is lower then our side. We’ve never seen it get to the top, though we have seen it higher then this. And that's down about 12 inches from where is was right before dawn. The ditch is at least half again deep as that small tree is high, if not deeper. It’s a lot of water.

  It’s still raining in St Petersburg, though it’s stopped at the house, for the moment. This line of showers is moving south slowly. So it may keep up for a while yet. We’ve already gotten our monthly allotment of rain for June. And it’s only the 7th. Hopefully we can retain some of this water for drier spells later in the year, long after the Walsingham River has returned to normal levels.

Picture Taking...

Neither Edward nor I own a bicycle. So that presented a challenge for an illustration for Edward's poem “Laughter”, until I remembered that several people in the office ride to work each day. Maybe I could just borrow one. 

Who did I ask if I could borrow their bicycle?  My boss, Nathaniel. 

Being the good sport he is, it was not a problem, even though I felt I needed to explain why. Edward is a writer, I reminded him, I take pictures to illustrate his pieces. 

I had to wait for the sun to come out, as it was cloudy all morning, but in the afternoon the sky broke. It was better light, even though I took the picture in the shade. The colors were brighter than if it had remained overcast. 

I like the contrast between the orange of the frame and the green of the grass. Several of the pictures took advantage of the bicycle's frame elements, brightly crossing the image in diagonal slashes, as well as the curve of the wheel, all design elements talked about in  the photography courses. Focus shifted from the gears to the frame in different pictures, one third up the picture frame, or one third down.

This wasn’t the first time I’ve taken pictures at work for Edward’s writing. But now I am sure that a number of the people think I’m wholly crazy. Why else would I be sitting in the grass in the courtyard, camera in hand, leaning in close to the spokes of a borrowed bicycle lying on the ground.  

You can read "Laughter" here on Edward's Fiction Blog.