OH, WHAT A NIGHT!

When you live in the Hill Country, things sometimes get, well, interesting. Unpredictable. Down right scary. We went to bed doing a happy dance night before last. Woohoo! We'd got two inches of rain, and our water collection tank was full to the brim yet again! But then it kept raining. And raining. And raining. And the lightening and thunder were just non-frickin'-stop. And we were babysitting our grand-dog, who HATES lightening and thunder. By the time it was all over, we'd received 12 or 13 inches of rain at our house. Even more in some places. That kind of rain does things. Changes landscapes, and lives, permanently. We were lucky.

Our little dry creek had turned into a raging torrent, and we could hear that waterfall up at our house on the hill, even with the windows closed.

But the rain stopped in the early morning, then the sun came out and stayed out all day, so the water had a chance to recede. If it were to start raining again any time soon, we could be in a world of hurt. As it is, we just have to get used to a few additions to our landscape. Remember that Fleetwood Mac song, Landslide? Well, we have more than a few of these to look at now -- little rivers of mud that flattened the waving grasses and uprooted most of the plants in their path.

The cliff faces along the front edge of our property, and behind the garage and parking areas, have all turned into weeping grottoes, which is actually kind of nice...

and all of the drainage ditches were still running with little streams at the end of the day.

Our small water crossing, which was bone dry before, now looks like this...

while the one with the scary drop-off, which never has water on it except during floods, still looks like this:

The only reason I was willing to drive across it yesterday was that I knew it hadn't been raining anywhere in the area for hours. If it were still raining, not just here, but anywhere upstream from us, and you did drive through water here? Well, there's a good chance you could be caught up in a flash flood, and end up in a pile like the one that found it's way here during the middle of the night.

Like I said though, we were lucky. Others, not so much. I just heard from Outdoor Woman that their friends down on Onion Creek -- the ones who board her daughter Lauren's horse -- lost everything. They spent hours on top of a building, their dog was swept out of their arms as they climbed up, and they thought all the horses were lost as well. Fortunately, Lauren's horse had managed to brace himself against a shed, and survived! They later got word that a few horses were found further downstream, but they've got no place to come back to now.

I'm praying that this is the only sad story I hear today.