All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray…
I’ve been longin’ for a walk on a summer’s day…

Finally, it seems we’re not just dreaming for our wonderful California weather, as the rain has stopped. Never have I seen rain in such massive quantities or lasting for such a long period of time. When we lived in Akron, Ohio, we had long periods of dismal, gray days, but never did it rain for so long. Don’t think we had any serious damage to our house other than leakage around the chimney. Amazingly, the roof over the family room held up with nary a drip. I kept waiting for it to give way–especially since I had just finished painting the ceiling on the inside–but it never did. It’s supposed to stay dry through the weekend with temps in the low 70’s. Even though it’s not going to be real warm, I’m not complaining. Dry is good…

Because of all the rain (only 1 dry day since 12/27!) we still have our Christmas street decoration to take down as well as lights along the front of the garage roof. Additionally, I have 12 tubs full of decorations piled up in the house, since it was impossible to haul them out to the garage until the rain let up. So, I’m hopeful I can finally get my house back to normal this weekend. Also, the gardener hasn’t been here since 12/24, so the grass really needs to be cut and the last of the leaves from next door are spread all over the place.

I pulled some weeds in the backyard for about an hour on New Year’s Day and just tossed them on the concrete next to the flower beds. Normally they would dry out after about a day and I would just rake them up. Because of all the rain and build up of water on the concrete, they are still ALIVE!!! Of course, the rain has caused a whole new crop of weeds to take off. At times I miss the days of real winter weather where everything died and you only had to deal with lawn work for about 6-7 months out of the year. But then again, not really.

I posted a few pictures of the massive amount of rain pouring off my roof in the photo gallery. Don’t know if you can see the “curtain” of rain real well, but it was mighty impressive in person.