January 2012

Please do excuse my absence, the holidays took quite a toll and now mother nature has decided to deal her hand.

It has been an extra-ordinary week. 5 inches of snow fell on the nursery followed by 6" of rain, the rain falling at 50+ deg F. setting all time high temperature records for the valley. It doesn't take an expert to determine that this is a recipe for flooding.

Fritillaria montana



So Fritillaria montana doesn't have anything to do with flooding and isn't even blooming now as this picture was taken last March, but since this blog is about bulbs I thought I should inlcude a picture of one.

Regardless, the theme of the day is high water and while I did have some water in the crawl space I was spared the worst of it as others can certainly attest to. My day job is in stormwater for the capitol city of the beaver state. So needless to say I was busy. The state of emergency was declared and I worked 12 hour shifts from noon till midnight assisting citizens in the hardest hit areas. There wasn't a whole lot we could do as Mill Creek, a winding tributary to the great Santiam river decided to spill it's banks and find it's own natural course through hundreds of houses in the State St. neighborhood.

One poor lady standing at an intersection with a suitcase in her hand asked us "What is the plan", my aged hispanic co-worker chuckled under his breath, looked her in the eye and said simply "pray"......."pray it stops raining". The poor lady had just returned from a trip to Montana, to find her house under a 1' of water and she was walking the two blocks from her car in sneakers through sewage infested flood waters.

My ex wife lives in the little bed room community of Turner. the whole town was evacuated when Mill Creek, which meanders  like a snake through the town decided to over top it's banks. She had enough time to get home, pack up Lola the pug and  some clothes before sherrifs deputies started canvassing the neighborhood ordering people out.

She was one of the lucky ones, the water never reached her house, but on the news tonight the Governer was seen touring through devastated homes just blocks away where the water  had hit 3' in there homes.

Again, nothing to do with flooding but here is Chinodoxa "Valentines Day" only a few short weeks away from brightening up the greenhouse.

So eventually the flood waters receeded, after taking stalk, I was pretty lucky, while perched on the top of a hill some 600' above sea level, I still sit at the lowest point of the hung valley. I had water flowing through my crawl space for some days. But it never came close to causing any damage to my property. The greenhouse sits well above the ditch line and it would take a flood of Noah's proportions to ever hit that. At that point it wouldn't much matter since it would be the end of day's anyway....oh wait, god promised he wasn't going to off people that way again didn't he?