REPORT FROM A GARDENER DEALING WITH HURRICANE HARVEY

It's been a difficult week.

I live at the "x".  Since Thursday, we've had 33 inches from Hurricane Harvey. A few areas have had even more!

 This will soon be the worst rain event in our 130+ weather history!!! Rains are expected for tonight, tomorrow and in to Wednesday.

I'll update tomorrow!

WIND MAP OF USA ~ AMAZING!

http://hint.fm/wind/

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Data compiled by David Ross ~ National Weather Service

source:  "Texas Hurricane History"

https://www.weather.gov/media/lch/events/txhurricanehistory.pdf

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Early in the week, the predictions for epic rainfall totals started to pour in. The National Weather Service started with 10-15inches and by the end of the week this news source predicted up to 40 inches (101.6 cm)!

Thursday remained dry, but cloudy. Friday ended with .80" (3.3cm) and that night brought 3.00 inches (7.6cm) of rain. It all soaked in the ground since this part of Texas had not seen rain in two weeks. So far so good.

Saturday brought only .50 inches (1.2cm) of rain. I was beginning to feel relieved....until that night.

As you can see by the above photo the first band of tropical rains completely filled our street. I measured 3.40inches (8.6cm) in 4 hours. 

It was a lot, but I had been through more until....

just a couple of hours later it poured buckets AGAIN as another band of tropical rain drenched the Houston area. I sat up and took notice!!! Two floods in one night! Geez!!!

My garden is low compared to most and the runoff from the gutters have always overwhelmed my drainage systems. So...leading up to Harvey, I set up an entire system of pipes that took the water directly from the roof to the front drive and on to the street.

My yard is too low to bury them, so I just considered the whole thing a temporary stop-gap measure against the railings of Harvey. 

This morning (Sunday) I woke up to this! It had been raining steadily since 3:30am!

To keep the water out of our house I would have to do even more.

By the way, that house on the corner is not damaged; it is new construction and they aren't finished.

I had put this nice path way in a number of years ago. But today in an extreme effort to get the predicted rains out of my back yard, I decided to pull the pavers up.

I'm so glad I did because....

KAPOW!!!

We have had FOUR cycles of horrific rain bands travel through our part of Houston today.

I have kept careful records from my rain gauge.

The number for today is an all time record and looks like this:

4.20inches (street floods to all time high)

3.30 street floods again

2.40 floods again!

.90 afternoon lull (thank God!)

5.10 inches tonight (up to my porch and door! Street hits second record high in one day!)

TOTAL for SUNDAY, AUGUST 27th, 2017....15.90 inches (40.3cm) of precipitation

You might be wondering where all our street water is going? Well, here's the place.

This is White Oak Bayou near 34th street. This goes directly to downtown Houston and on to Galveston Bay. 

As you can see, we really can't handle any more RAIN here! 

Sadly, Harvey has stalled and is throwing tremendous bands of rain across this part of the Texas.

On the map above, my house and garden are next to the letter "H" in Houston. Seeing a hundred mile long rain band sends chills down my spine. Sometimes they move around a bit and that's what you hope for! Otherwise, you get 4 straight hours of drenching rain.

My 'Hill Country' stream has been flowing a lot lately. If it weren't for the hurricane, I could actually enjoy the sounds of the rippling water. 

I'm not thinking very much about my garden these days. The plants will make it just fine. Tropical gardens are like that.

What I'm thinking about right now are the people sitting on their rooftops waiting to be rescued!

We have TWO MORE days of this. I am praying that Harvey will somehow move away early and die out in some drought stricken part of the country. 

I've lived along the Texas coast all my life and seen a number of hurricanes and flood events in my 59 years.

But this ONE ranks number ONE on my list of worst FLOODS!

The old record for my garden was with Tropical Storm Allison at 20.00 inches.

All for now! Keep dry!!!

David/:0)

Final Updated Total Rainfall Event:

Overnight Early Morning 1.2" 

Monday Morning: 1.4"

Monday Afternoon 2.3"

Monday Night 6-10PM  2.4"

Tuesday Early Morning Midnight-8am  1.5"

Tuesday Morning 8-12  0.9" 

Tuesday PM  0.15"

GRAND TOTAL...... for 5 day Hurricane Harvey.....35.75" (91cm)

Watering Can filled itself this week!

Ceiling in bedroom now has a slow leak. It looks at bit like the shape of Antarctica.

Must now cut a hole in the sheet rock and put a plastic container up there to catch the drip.

Still no water in house, so I count myself lucky.

THE JOY OF CRAPEMYRTLES

A sampling of crapemyrtle blooms in my neighborhood

If I could pick one plant that I ignore and seldom even notice it would be our huge crapemyrtle in the front garden.

It has kept that old, straggly shape for the last 32 years. It has always looked like a bent over 'old man'. 

Judging from its trunk, it was probably planted back in the 1960s or even earlier. Our house was built in 1949 so it could be very old.

I have always felt sorry for our crapemyrtle because it struggled for decades underneath our neighbor's line of pecan trees. You can see from this photo how lopsided the poor thing has grown.

That all changed three years ago when the trees were cut down to make way for a new house.

The crapemyrtle that had waited patiently for perhaps half a century had finally been released from its shady captivity.

Our crapemyrtle is also a haven for a naturally occuring species called ball moss.

The ball moss does not take nutrients from the tree, but it can overwhelm its host if left unchecked. I climb a ladder once a year to thin out the hundreds of ball moss babies.

The crapemyrtle is an excellent choice for most of East Texas since it requires no fertilizing, no special soils, no pruning, and will tolerate both wet periods as well as drought.

Our crapemyrtle also has a high canopy that allows that perfect dappled light to filter through to the flowers below. I try to plant flowers and herbs that like a dry soil in and around crapemyrtles since they have an extensive root system that will compete for water.  My rosemary plants LOVE this location.

I am a bit color blind in the area of pinks and magentas. So I went around the block and collected a sampling of our neighborhood crapemyrtles. I'm pointing to mine. What color would you call it?

By the way, there were at least three more shades of pink I could have added to the group, but I was on my bicycle and it was too HOT to do any more collecting!

I have one other crapemyrtle in the backyard. It is the white variety with a beautiful tan and white trunk and gorgeous foliage. In the fall, the leaves turn a flaming orange color.

It's a very small plant, so no blooms yet.

Our crapemyrtle will never have a perfect shape or win any prizes. But it does bloom its heart out each and every year for months on end. If it ever dies (which will be decades from now), I will turn some of the smooth branches into walking sticks. We've been through a lot together during the past 32 years of gardening. It would be nice to have a keepsake of my old friend.

All for now!

Happy Gardening!

David/:0)

Houston, Texas