Photos of my garden from the view from my office window is one way I keep track of weather and changes in the garden over all the seasons. After the drought this summer I did not expect three days of rain, sometimes very hard raid. Our garden sits on clay and a high water table. There are many floods but to have such a drenching at this time of the year is very unusual.  You can see we have left out our old summer chairs so that we can still visit family and neighbors at social distance.

Such flood are not unusual, and when we began our garden here we knew we would need to create raised beds, and to choose water loving plants. Examples here are of the river birches, yellow twig dogwood, and winterberries which do no show up well from this distance. Winterberries, Ilex verticillata, is an American native holly and it loves living in a swamp, even a part-time swamp. Other water loving plants that thrive in our wet garden include buttonbush, viburnams, summersweet and daylilies.

I was surprised that the flood waters came so far east. The red twig dogwood and the viburnam don’t mind the water, we though this area was safe for  the roses. The water left this section within a day and a half, so I have hope the roses will continue to thrive.

This morning on December 4 the garden has dried , but the weather report suggests more rain coming. Maybe snow. But the snow is only  for the hills. I hope.