As the remnants if Ida sweep through my neck of the woods, it has been raining like crazy all day and, as you can see, there are already two inches of standing water and we have a couple more days of this ahead of us:
I think I am gonna need another willow.
dr. bloor
If only to muffle the sound of the guy next door building his ark.
Gin & Tonic
You should plant it between the current one and the house.
Repatriated
@dr. bloor: The willow is too close to the ark.
eclare
I am so jealous. We were promised rain in Memphis. None. None in the forecast.
HinTN
Do you have a basement, Cole? Looks dicey…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
this is when your willow reveals it is an Ent
Middlelee
I just realized we haven’t seen anything about your garden this summer. Or have I just missed it? I come here every day.
KrackenJack
Looks like prime beaver habitat to me. I’m sure they’d appreciate another willow.
Ken
Don’t waste money buying another willow. If you cut off a small branch of the one you have and stick it in that wet ground, you’ll have a tree within a few months.
moops
How is your french drain working?
Scout211
What is this thing you call “rain?” Where does it come from?
Can I order some for California? Which app should I use?
Roger Moore
It’s too close to the house.
Bill Arnold
@Ken:
Not reliable. Best to do it with a half-dozen branches, planted around the yard, to improve the odds that at least one will root. The ones that root can be transplanted in the fullness of time, with sufficient motivation.
(Full disclosure: I have 3 20-foot weeping willows (some pussy willows and a variegated cultivar too), but they’re far from the house.)
moops
or maybe try planting sorghum next year. if the torrent shows up, you will get a huge crop and you can try your hand at processing, or use it as mulch the following year. If the rains fail to come, then it just remains stunted and mowable.
RobNYNY
Willows like a lot of water. Too soon to worry.
moops
yeah, wistfully looking at other regions getting rain. So much water and not where we want it. *sigh
Bex
Will Steve cooperate with the box option?
Odie Hugh Manatee
Is your deck going to become your dock?
J R in WV
Fire and flood, plague and drought.
Pretty close to the Four Horsemen, ain’t it? Good thing it’s a whole continent wide, otherwise we wouldn’t have room for all four.
The willow is growing really fast… won’t go any farther on that topic.
Did you all see the 80 pound cougar they confiscated from an apartment in NYC? Cruel to the big kitty! Needs moar room !! At least no one had to evacuate their home with that bad boy in their arms! Also rainy here. I went to the county seat to pay the taxes, register the cars, etc. Wore my mask also too~!!~
Mary G
I’d kill for that here in California. Or for half an inch; I have a whole stack of buckets waiting to be put out to catch rain. If we ever get any.
Very happy that the Chaparral Fire about 15 miles inland from me is still at only 1,427 acres and 50% controlled by Riverside Co. Fire, Cal Fire, and the federal firefighters assigned to the Cleveland National Forest. If no Santa Ana winds kick up it’ll be great.
CaseyL
Put down a gravel bed, plant some water lillies, and you could have a really nice frog pond there. Turtles, too!
Kent
Bone dry here in my corner of the Pacific Northwest (outskirts of Portland). Went out with my daughter yesterday looking for pill bugs for her AP Bio class. Spent about an hour with a pulaski digging up old rotting logs in the greenbelt behind our house and found nothing. Usually there are hundreds. But everything was just bone dry and the logs and dirt just crumbled to dust everywhere. So far we haven’t had any bad fires anywhere near here like last year. But the fire season is far from over. I just know some MAGAt asshole is going to start a fire in the woods with his ATV and then we will be fucked.
Benw
Fucking Queen Bavmorda was a real asshole, you know?
E.
Cheers from Siskiyou County, which is currently on fire, hasn’t had rain in months, and has air quality in the 400s. It’s been like this for weeks. Or when I want my glass half full: house has not burned down yet.
NotMax
Mr. Frog doing his happy dance.
lurker
first thought – if you need another willow, looks like there might be some room between the current one and the house
ETA: looks like @Gin & Tonic: beat me to it…
Dan B
@Scout211: Rain in Seattle!! We got the tiniest falling mist for a couple minutes. I had to clean my glasses to see the ripples on our, almost empty, pond / water storage tank.
And, there is a steady breeze!!
¿¡Winter is coming!?*
*Predicted to be high 70’s by Friday. Much lower fire risk is good since the garden is full of Chapparal type drought tolerant plants, and Eucalyptus, that burn reeeeel good. Wasn’t thinking high fire potential 12 years ago when they were planted.
quakerinabasement
You don’t need another willow, you need a diving board.
VeniceRiley
@Mary G: I got a brief shower warning on my phone from ch4. Not enough to get the parking lot wet.
dr. bloor
@NotMax:
Or, possibly, the backstroke.
MomSense
Oh no. I’ve refrained rom commenting until now, but I fear the willow tree IS actually too close to the house.
MagdaInBlack
You need ducks.
jeffreyw
@CaseyL:
Delk
Want some cicadas?
Dan B
One good thing about our water storage tanks is we fill shallow saucers and bills with water and get lots of birbs’es. We may be the only fresh water within a mile or more.
The “tanks” collect water from 3/4 of the roof of the house, all of the large tool shed, and a good but of the back yard. Three feet of rain on that surface area should be enough to water the entire garden for the summer but not this year and we were short last summer and fall.
JC needs to invest in a pipeline to ship all that H2O west over the Rockies.
Right?
rattlemullet
John Cole beware -The willow will eat your plumbing and sanitary system. Beware of the weeping willow. Dogs are the best! Your web site exemplifies the care of animals.
Yarrow
Have you put in a rain garden/ bio swale? Would help direct some of the water a bit and make it more useful.
Ohio Mom
Standing water is no good for basements — ask me how I know (sob).
Maybe a landscape company can create a drainage system that will send the water out front to the storm sewer. Where it belongs.
CaseyL
@jeffreyw: Very funny :)
(Actually, that turtle looks pissed off. That glaring red eye!)
lowtechcyclist
What’s left of Ida is headed towards Maryland tomorrow – where I am (a bit south of Annapolis), we’re supposed to get an inch or two of rain. Guess that means it should stop raining on Cole sometime tomorrow. Also, good thing I had the kiddo mow the lawn today.
MagdaInBlack
@Dan B: The old farm house and property we had, had a shallow well, and a REALLY big rainwater cistern. All the buildings drained into it. We used it for everything but drinking.
JMG
Ida coming for us on the Cape starting tomorrow night. In truth, while the rest of New England has had rainstorm after rainstorm this summer, we have not. Don’t need to make the deficit up in one night, however, but living on a sandbar means excess water doesn’t hang around too long.
Matt McIrvin
It’s coming here tomorrow night through Thursday.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
You’re gonna need a bigger boat
Gin & Tonic
@E.: I recall last spring when my son was in Kyiv he reported an AQI of about 550.
OzarkHillbilly
Your willow will be fine.
eta <a href=”#comment-8274003″>@MomSense</a>: exactly, the house might be fucked but the willow will be fine.
eta2: I see a NOLA journey in my future. They need a generator. Now. New baby and all that.
jnfr
I see why your willow is so happy! All your trees seem to be thriving.
Wvng
Been expecting serious rain all day here in the Eastern panhandle of WV and only drizzle so far. Plenty of time for lots of rain but hoping the 2-3″ they are now calling for here is it, as opposed to the 4-6 forecast.
Alice
The Caldor fire evacuation zone has spread up Tahoe’s west shore into Nevada.
Anyone who wants to bitch about lazy, useless feds needs to check in with this guy – https://twitter.com/ichaydon/status/1432806148294397955
Poe Larity
Well, while you’re trapped, you can play Covid Bingo
Roger Moore
@Mary G:
The next few days are looking pretty mild. Let’s hope that forecast holds. We actually got a few drops of rain at work in Duarte, which is unseasonable for August.
zhena gogolia
You’ve drawn my attention to the fact that we’re supposed to get 3-5 inches of rain tomorrow night. This is much worse than Henri, it sounds like, at least for us.
John H. McDonald
@Kent: I’m actually doing some research on pillbugs in the Northwest. A thick bed of English ivy, especially if it’s in the shade (such as the north side of a building or brick wall), can be a good place to find them. Really pull aside the ivy to get down to the dirt, and look up close to the base of the building wall. Because it’s been dry, they’ll probably be rolled into a ball instead of wandering around, so look closely.
Another good place to look is in trashy overgrown vacant lots, underneath old boards and lumps of concrete.
CarolPW
@Alice: Nevada is east of the lake.
Betty
@John H. McDonald: You never know what expertise you will encounter on this site. Cool!
SuzieC
It has been pouring all day here in Columbus. We live next to the Olentangy River. I expect it will be flooded tomorrow morning.
JPL
OT.. While another child dies of Covid in her district, MTG is on Tucker’s show threatening telcoms. The boy was only thirteen, so maybe to her he didn’t really matter.
Scout211
@CarolPW:
Yes, and now under mandatory evacuations.
https://www.douglascountynv.gov/news/what_s_new/caldor_fire_tahoe_evacuation_orders
JPL
@zhena gogolia: The northeast could experience heavy flooding. Ida moved further north in GA, so although I we had an inch or two of rain, it could have been much worse. Stay safe.
ant
the way to turn a willow branch into a tree is to dig a trench, and lay in (bury) the branch with a small amount of the thicker end sticking out. keep moist until it sprouts. pee on it.
willows do best right next to septic systems/water mains/irrigated gardens, or of course, as close to a house as you can get.
Caphilldcne
@John H. McDonald: this is possibly the best expert comment ever on this site.
Another Scott
Good luck, JC.
In other news, Twitter on Chrome on Winders is apparently on to our “fix” of blocking all Twitter cookies. Now it’s giving me “Something went wrong, but don’t fret — let’s give it another shot.” until I allow it to set cookies.
Grr…
Guess I’ll be clearing them manually until I have a better solution.
Cheers,
Scott.
Richard
@Kent:
No pillbugs! That’s pretty dire, seriously. I heard about your drought, we in Utah are in it too. We can’t ignore the fires because the smoke is here too. We heard about the heatwaves that killed hundreds.
Hopefully they have gone underground.
Ohio Mom
@Another Scott: What I’ve been doing for reading Twitter is setting my phone to “private.” It isn’t too much trouble but definitely makes me miss the old days.
CarolPW
@Scout211: I know. I am watching the best part of my childhood burn down.
NotMax
@Another Scott
Ccleaner (free version) is your friend.
N.B.: Not always, but sometimes it will offer to install other items along with itself (none necessarily harmful, just extraneous stuff unrelated to Ccleaner proper). There’s always an option to refuse just those or to uncheck installation of those. So do look first before running all the way through the set-up.
Have been using it since way, way back when it was a simpler tool and was bluntly called Crap Cleaner. I habitually zap both cookies and cache with it as a matter of course every time I close my browser.
raven
(CNN)Two senior leaders in the US Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine review office are stepping down, even as the agency works toward high-profile decisions around Covid-19 vaccine approvals, authorizations for younger children and booster shots.
The retirements of Dr. Marion Gruber, director of the Office of Vaccines Research and Review at FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, and Dr. Philip Krause, deputy director of the office, were announced in an internal agency email sent on Tuesday and shared with CNN by the FDA.
zhena gogolia
@Another Scott:
I’ve been using the “incognito window” solution.
And not reading Twitter anywhere near as much as I used to. I guess that’s what they want.
NotMax
OT.
Rudy goes full-on Norma Desmond.
raven
@NotMax: I used to us CCC, Carbon Copy Cloner
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@NotMax: is he saying we’re the drunks?
Matt McIrvin
@NotMax: “My hair dye stayed still, it’s my face that ran upward!”
NotMax
@Jim, Foolish Literalist
The man is several drams short of a shot.
//
Ken
@NotMax: I can believe he’s still the man who sited the city’s emergency command center in a building complex that had already been the target of a terrorist attack. And wasn’t there something about putting his mistress in charge of distribution of the disaster relief funds?
Splitting Image
NB for Twitter users:
There is a good plugin you can add to Chrome and Firefox called “Behind the Overlay”. It will allow you to remove the sign-in window that pops up on Twitter and allow you to read the tweet threads it’s covering up. It will work on a lot of other sites that ask you to sign in, send them your e-mail address, and the like.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
That’s not a good page to link to! It starts an automatic download of CCleaner with very short notice. Maybe the main page.
Have you been to the Twitter site to see if CCleaner works there?
Mary G
Ohio hospitals working hard:
VeniceRiley
@raven: Maybe they don’t want death threats
VeniceRiley
@NotMax: B y Piriform! I love their Recuvah program. Find old files and photos you’ve deleted long ago. Even got all the wedding photos off a flash drive AFTER I had reformatted.
Benw
Ride, @OzarkHillbilly: ride! Glad your fam weathered the storm and hope they stay well until you provide succor.
Another Scott
@Splitting Image: Ah, nice.
Ctrl-shift-x
Works well. Thanks for the pointer.
Cheers,
Scott.
geg6
@lowtechcyclist:
Remnants of Ida are expected to begin here in SW PA in about an hour and last all day tomorrow. Our koi pond is going to overflow, I’m afraid.
HeleninEire
Looks like maaaaaaybe??? I’ll get into Dublin in 10 days. The Irish gov’t issued new COVID guidance today. After the EU told the member States not to let Americans in. We (me and my Irish friends) waited until 8pm Irish time for them to announce. The guidance was all about reducing COVID restrictions internally. Nothing about tourists. I’m hoping no news is good news!
And you all thought I was absent. I told you I would not STFU when the time approached.
Ken
@Mary G: Isn’t he supposed to go to one of Florida’s 20 or so centers for a dose of Regeneron* antibodies?
* “As seen in DeathSantis’ twitter feed. Ask for it by name.”
Suzanne
@geg6: It already rained here a bunch today. My new plants look awesome.
Alice
@CarolPW: Yes, thanks – stress of the moment, I know that because I am there.
trollhattan
So profoundly “not here” and yet I too have a willow. Willows, evidently, are not the rain-creating plants some assert them to be. (Pro tip: for a happy willow, plant it over the sewer main.)
Get out the snorkel, Cole, and have some backyard hijinks.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@HeleninEire:
I thought they walked that back to “unvaccinated Americans”?
trollhattan
Band I really want to see is coming to a small club here next month, but delta gallops around the metroplex. Conflicted!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
HeleninEire
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: unvaccinated Americans always had to isolate. 2 months ago Ireland let vaccinated Americans in. The EU is saying, well maybe not. The EU is letting the member states decide for themselves.
geg6
@Suzanne:
That was nothing compared to what my weather app says is coming over the next 15-18 hours. And as I type this on my deck, the drops are starting.
citizen dave
My wife is watching “Generation 9/11” on PBS right now and I unfortunately heard a Former Guy clip. I forgot how eloquent he was:
Dec. 7, 2015
T**** speaking during a press conference:
“D***** J. T**** is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.”
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Debated on using that page as a link, but finding the free version on the rest of the site can be a bit confusing, and since even if it is downloaded it’s still a set-up program which will do nothing and remain inert until it is separately and deliberately installed afterwards I didn’t feel it was a noxious choice of linkage.
Gvg
Plant a red maple. They suck up water but also have pretty red fall foliage.
LarryB
Meanwhile, in California: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13prdyojRgo
rikyrah
The willow???