Enough!!!

It is raining AGAIN.  It's been raining for a solid month, it seems.  I am so so SO sick of it.  Most of our property is a lake.  The driveway is underwater and the drainage canal that runs down the side is overflowing.  And over at the barn where the horses are boarded the pastures are so muddy that it's necessary to wear lace-up boots so they don't get sucked off when you have to walk out there.  And to top it all off, we have one more horse than we have stalls at the moment, so every day I have to decide which ones get to kick back in a nice dry stall and which one gets stuck standing out in the cold pouring rain in water up to his/her ankles!  And no matter who I choose, I feel awful about it.  I sure wish our own barn were complete.  Once we get them all home, they will have direct access from their paddocks to their stalls so they can make their own decisions about where they want to be.  Down the road where we board, it's necessary to go get them out of the pasture and lead them across the parking area to the barn.  And at the moment, even that parking area is a lake.  It's so muddy that the truck almost slides off the side of the drive when driving up to the barn.  It's almost enough to make me rethink the idea of living back up in Ohio instead of Louisiana.  At least up there the ground is frozen enough not to be messy for most of the winter.

This IS pretty unusual, though, actually.  Mark says it's caused by El Nino.  The last time the property flooded was back in 2006.  The flooding this year seems worse over at the boarding barn (the barn itself actually flooded a few days ago - that didn't happen in 2006), but not as bad here at the house.  In 2006 the garage flooded about 6 inches deep.  This year the driveway is underwater, but there's no water in the garage.  Fortunately, the house is raised 30 inches or so above ground level, so it's unlikely the house itself would ever flood -- unless the levee on the Mississippi a half mile down the road were to break.  But in that case, a flooded house would be the least of our problems! 

In the photo to the right, the 20-foot-wide, 15-foot-deep drainage canal isn't even visible -- it looks like just one more wet spot in the front yard!