Good Bye Summer!

So long to September. Good bye summer. It has been an unusual several weeks around here. Severe storms, earthquakes, hurricanes, tropical storms, rain, rain, and more rain. We tripled the normal September rainfall amount and broke the all-time record for this area. I am told that we also have already set the all-time record for annual rainfall - and it is only October!. We have recorded over 16 inches at our house in recent weeks - 13 during one storm. Many of us have spent time drying out our basements and cutting grass and cutting grass and cutting grass. I guess you should not have your lawn fertilized if you are going to get record rain. Fortunately, my wife enjoys riding the mower so we have shared the "fun". Actually, in October our lawn looks almost like a golf course - that is amazing. But the excessive moisture has created a problem in our large flower bed in that some disease has quickly spread throughout the bed. We only hope that many of the flowers survive and revive in the spring. But there are two bits of good news from the rain. We have a well and at least right now we shouldn't need to worry about losing our supply of water. PTL! Secondly, last spring we ordered two new pine trees. We were disappointed when the planters didn't arrive until late in July. They gave us instructions that we had to give them a heavy watering, at least once a week. That was a challenge because of the distance of the trees from our house. But guess what? We only had to water them ourselves one time. The good Lord did the rest. Now we have a new challenge. The leaves have begun to fall. Our township collects our leaves free of charge, but they can't contain grass clippings. So since we use our mower to collect our leaves, how are we going to cut the still growing grass and collect the falling leaves? This should be more fun. But we are ready to take on that challenge. However, we aren't ready for the next one which is probably just around the corner - something called snow! That I am not looking forward to. I'd rather cut grass twice a week than shovel the snow. We've already begun to see the wooly caterpillars that are often used to predict the winter weather. They are more reliable than the weather guys. But some of the caterpillars are all light brown and others are all dark brown. We haven't seen the usual stripes that indicate the storms. Maybe they are confused this year as well. Does that mean no snow or does it mean heavy snow all winter? I just hope that it isn't a continuation of August and September! Oh well, whatever the Lord provides. In the meantime I'll just keep working on the grass and the leaves. Despite the work, I do enjoy the fall - my favorite season!