Officially ready for rain, damn it.

Guys, I'm so sick of watering the garden. I'm sick of sunshine and warm weather and the hard rocky soil that prevents me from putting my new grasses in the ground.

OH I KNOW. I know. I should shut up.

I just want three days of light but steady rain, enough to recharge the ground a bit. I'd also like to test out our new gutter situation. Since I built the rain garden in front the size of an Olympic swimming pool, I've determined that it can handle all the gutter outflow from the front of the house. The only problem is that the gutters on the left side of the front of the house all tip toward a downspout here:

I need the gutters to tip toward the right side of the house, to the downspout that leads to the buried PVC pipe that carries the water to the rain garden. 

So these guys came out, removed the gutters, cut them down, then repositioned them so they tip to the right.

They also removed the downspout there, so we need to do some touch-up painting.

They left the gutters a grimy mess but otherwise everything looks fine. Now I just need some rain to make sure they work properly. I spent the weekend ignoring the sunshine and making a freezer full of empanadas and contemplating sewing projects.

I am ready for cool weather. I'm ready for long sleeves and homemade pasta and movies and pining for spring. Let's do this.

It's unorthodox but it works

We wanted to reroute more gutters to the rain garden but I didn't want to do anything permanent until we'd really tested whether it could handle so much more water. My first thought was a racquetball over the downspout hole (I don't know) but Greg didn't have one, despite the fact that he owns every piece of sporting equipment ever.

But a measuring cup worked. Don't laugh.

Believe it or not, this is effectively blocking that downspout and the water is now dumping into the rain garden (which is now filling a lot faster). I can watch it during heavy rain and see if it's in danger of overflowing. If the extra rain overflows or overwhelms the rain garden, I can just yank the measuring cup out of the gutter and take the pressure off.

And if it continues to work we can have that downspout removed professionally. And I own three measuring cup sets so I should survive without this one. Everyone wins! Now stop laughing.

They don't call us puddletown for nothing

It's raining.  It's hailing. It's pouring. I feel like I should have moss growing in between my toes.

Today it rained so furiously that my gutters were overflowing. Please, someone sacrifice a virgin to the weather gods already!