Fragments From Floyd

The sun shines, steam rises and two humans and one dog scurry outside between storms into a saturated sponge of a valley. Branches bend under the weight of the wetness, falling into our path as the larger branches of trees will be draped across the road this morning as we attempt to leave this rice paddy for our workplaces. It is raining still in the dark, so we can't see what has become of the road. I feel certain I'll have to take the long way round, as the 10 inches of rain over the weekend may have trenched the road so even the truck can't get over them. Ann's trip is complicated by the south fork of the Roanoke River there at Alley's Store in Allegheny Spring Road; it may still be over the road, and there are no alternatives but to backtrack and drive to Floyd and up Route 8 on to Blacksburg, turning a 25 mile trip into a 60 mile trip.

My weakest link will be at the Pilot Post Office. If water isn't over the road this morning, it's a sure thing it was during the day yesterday. This afternoon, after another day of rain, we'll play the reverse, and wonder if we'll be able to get home. Without doubt, other than a hurricane, this storm system has brought us more water than we've seen here in our seven years on Goose Creek.

The image above isn't great, but it features one of my favorite things about summer rain: the way jewels bead up on the leaves of spicebush that grows thick in the shady places along the creeks. It would be interesting to take a peek at the leaf surface through a dissecting scope and see if there are hairs or glands that might account for why it holds such high surface tension, while other plants among spicebush's neighbors are flat, mat-dull green when wet.