Wild and Wet September

Our growing season is winding down.  Things are looking a little ratty in the back and I've already started pulling out some.  We have a second crop of green beans that were planted mid-August with GS1.  And the dahlias in their cages are putting on a pretty good show.

You can see that the leaves are already accumulating.  Those cleome plants were quite straggly and I saved almost a whole Cool Whip tub full of seed to sow next month.  What I didn't realize about these plants is that they have little thorns on the stalks and they can be a little painful to pull out without gloves.  

Our moonflower vine finally decided to bloom earlier this month.  It is true to its name in that it blooms at dusk and the blossoms shrivel up during the day.  

Taken from the house with the outside light on.

With the start of September what was left of Hurricane Ida targeted our area.  This is all the gravel that was washed down the hill during the deluge.  We had close to 9" of rain in a very short amount of time which caused flash floods and major river flooding.  Thankfully we didn't lose power and were able to keep two pumps running in our basement.  Our drains around the house couldn't keep up with the water coming down the hill.  There are three steps on the right side of this picture below and they became a waterfall.  Water came through the stone wall and even took part of it down next to our garage.  

This picture below is showing the pond that was collecting outside the dining room doors.  It came very close to coming over the pad.  There is a drain there, but the water came so hard and fast it couldn't keep up at times.  We both would have been outside sweeping this away with brooms but there was a lot of lightning.  We've done that in the past before we improved the drainage system, but even the improvements that were made couldn't help with this storm.

We took a ride the next morning.  For those that don't know our area, there is a brook across the street from us (downhill) that feeds into the North Branch of the Raritan River.  You could see that the water had come up and flooded the road in several areas on our street not only by the water/dirt marks on the foliage, but by the cars that had been abandoned that apparently were caught in the flash flooding.  The picture below shows the bridge about a half mile down the road from.  The road on the other side of the bridge was completely under and just past those trees there was a car that was submerged to the point of having only the top hood being visible and another one a little further that wasn't as covered probably on a higher portion of the road.  

That road, the continuation of Station Road goes into the little hamlet of North Branch which has a history of flooding and this time it was no different.  The tractor trailer you see in the picture is sideways in front of the bridge that goes over the North Branch River.  This picture was taken by someone who lives on that street who had water up into the first floor of their home.  In the days after these pictures were taken, when the water receded the homeowners and business owners had the grim task of removing all that was damaged by the flooding.   There were so many water rescues in our area that night and there was loss of life.  There were heartbreaking stories of people watching others being swept away in the deluge and of others that were missing.

The town that HWNSNBP and I grew up in is about 10 miles from where we live now and is bordered by two rivers the Raritan (which is fed by the North Branch) and the Millstone River.  I can remember several times that the town was flooded when we were living there.   We were no longer there when the last hurricane that came through, which I believe was Floyd in September of 1999, and there was a lot of damage to homes in low-lying areas.  A lot of the homeowners at the time lost their homes to condemnation.   Some people relocated but there are a lot that didn't and unfortunately this time the water was even more unforgiving.  There were several gas explosions in the town causing fires in buildings that couldn't be reached by emergency personnel.  Driving through the town last week it was heartbreaking to see the piles of belongings that had not yet been picked up.  People are still cleaning up.  My heart breaks for those that lost so much.

The landscape surrounding the little bridge down the street has changed.  They've had heavy equipment in near there trying to clean out the debris that was washed downstream and got hung up on the bridge.  And the mosquitos are just thriving in all the still wet areas making it very uncomfortable working outside in the yard.  But we are thankful that we were able to be safe without any losses.  As is normally the case after such an event, we are reevaluating how to be better prepared in the future - especially since we are no longer spring chickens.