I live in Colorado Springs, Colorado where the average precipitation per year is roughly 11 inches. This year, I’m not certain how many inches we’ve received, but I know we’re well over double that amount if not nearing triple that amount. El nino is definitely affecting our weather pattern to say the least. As a result, plants that usually grow to be maybe 5 feet each year and then bloom beautifully in late August, early September have grown to about, well, I’m not a good judge but at least 7 feet tall! Wild sprouts off of the roots of our elm trees have grown very tall and fast too. Okay, everything has just about burst right out of the stratosphere to tell the truth and our front flowerbeds were literally looking like rainforests! Even our mint plants were about 5 feet long/tall.
So, yesterday we had the biggest storm yet here at my house. At one point we were getting hail and rain from every direction and it was all hitting HARD! My cat tried to use me as a tree to escape the noise. I don’t know where she thought she was going, but apparently my body was her escape route! My dog just froze in the living room floor, not moving throughout the entire storm. It was quite fun! It looked like this in the middle of it all:
We ended up with 2.25″ of rain in about half an hour yesterday when all was said and done. Flash floods were the fear of the day in many areas of town. Thankfully, we live on the top of a hill, so we rarely have flooding problems here at home. This morning, while it was nice and cool, I decided to attack our rainforest and see what kind of good I could do. I worked on it all for about an hour and this is all I accomplished in that amount of time:
I realize it doesn’t look like I’ve accomplished much, but you must realize that before I started, you couldn’t see any of the red sidewalk in these areas and I think I disturbed a new small ecosystem of squirrels, a crazy cat, and many, many spiders and creepy crawlies in my efforts thus far. Our neighbor came over for a few minutes, after which I gave myself time for a midmorning tea break. Now it’s back to the rainforest for more chopping and hewing. Hopefully by the time my husband comes home this afternoon or at least before it starts raining again, I will be finished! I’ll keep you updated.
In the meantime, peace and love, always,
Elaine
Sunshine Lane 
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