Underwater

Mid-January has brought the flood. My stellar farm employee Shondell tried to get out to the farm on Monday to check on things, but said she couldn't get there, having forgotten her arc. What you are seeing in the above photo is the view from the high road, looking down onto the submerged farm road and the edge of the flower field.

My daughter and I ventured out today, two days later, to see how or if things had settled. The bridge we normally take over the river and across the valley was still underwater so we forged on, driving north and across the valley at a higher road, and then back down through Duvall to get to the farm.

Like Shondell, we still couldn't drive into the farm, the first section of the entry road being rutted and torn apart by the water. Luckily there were 6 guys working on fixing that. Slipping on our boots (which would prove to fail at least one of us), Vivian and I walked the fields. The beds were scoured, with silt and gravel washed through them. The good news is that the vast number of our bulbs didn't seem to have moved significantly. The bad news is that the top layer of soil was washed away on these beds and so Shondell and I will need to move in and start covering things back up and pressing them down in. We lost a few precious peonies, and maybe three dozen new perennials. But it could have been a lot worse.


As long as we get the bulbs and perennials settled, what I am most worried about are some roses standing in water.

As for our walk through the fields? It ended with our boots stuck in the mud, Vivian pulling her feet out and stepping silver sparkling stockinged feet into the earth, falling forward, falling backward, and getting mud on her nose. And then she had to head to singing club!


Before leaving we checked on the hoophouse and discovered that January has brought something lovely, too: our first anemone blooms.