And the River Rises

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Living on the river is a magical place to be until the river rises.  It decided last week to break all-time records and rise 13 plus feet.  We are officially Living Large on an Island.

Arial View of our Home during Flood 2017
Aerial View of our home. Mine is on the lower right. You can see the outline of my vegetable garden to the right of our home.

Our only means of transportation in and out of our home is a rowboat or for the not so faint of heart, hip waders, and a long tiring trudge down the road through thigh-high water. Lord knows what is in this water.

Photo of the row boat we used to get from our home to the outside world during flood 2017
This was early on in our flood adventures but we already have the rowboats ready for transportation.
Emma is leaving the house in hip wadders to get to the bus stop
Emma has chosen to up her exercise game by hiking out in hip waders.

Confession!  I’m over it!  Ruined gardens are devastating!  They were looking better than they have in years. That being said, when we get our gardens and yard back in order they will be nourished beyond measure and grown beautifully.  It’s hard but I’m trying to keep that thought in mind as I grieve the fact that I won’t have garden canned tomatoes until this time next year!

One of my hydrangea plants sticking out of the water in my flooded gardens
New Water Garden Feature

But we do have a lot to be grateful for! We have the sturdiest sandbag wall in our neighborhood, thanks to Handy. With pumps running from the pits between the house and the wall, it is properly engineered.  This is epic flooding so we have for the first time, wood supports holding the wall up.  Right now there are four pumps outside running non-stop and two in our crawl space keeping us dry.  Many of our neighbors have lost their homes and several more have contaminated well water.  We are very, very lucky.  I was supposed to be in St. Louis this week for work but I opted to stay home.  Handy needed to get back to work and someone must check on the pumps 24/7.  If they would stop for any reason then it’s a whole new ball game.

We started sandbagging on Friday, July 14th.  We had a graduation party planned for our girls on Saturday, July 15th.  As I mentioned earlier our yard and gardens were lovely.  We had completed many unfinished projects around the house.  We were ready for the big day and then….

Thank Goodness for Family & Friends

Handy’s brother and his wife, graciously opened up their beautiful home for us to host our party.  You can imagine the logistics of moving everything, through the water to another location.  All in all, we had a great time, and then it was back to the reality of our situation.

If you’ve been following my blog you know that we have chickens.  My concern for them grew as the waters continued to rise.  They were stuck in the coop with no good ideas of how to evacuate them.  Handy, of course, came up with a plan.

Chicken Coop that is half way under water with a platform that we built for the chickens to come out
Chicken Coop with Sun Deck

Fingers crossed that things will start returning back to normal.  We are all doing “no rain” dances and we continue to keep a sense of humor when the river rises!

Handy watering my plants in the flooded driveway with a beer in his hand
If you don’t laugh – You’ll cry!

Have a good week my friends!

PS – I want to give a big shout-out to our Family, Friends, Neighbors, and Strangers who helped with all the efforts to save our homes. Also to HomeDepot and the American Red Cross who are standing by to help those with the greatest need!  Our heartfelt gratitude to everyone!

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