I'm almost "week" from not blogging

Excuse me! I'm being yelled at....by a fox terrier who is demanding his after-dinner treats. "I've had my meal," he says, "and since I can't have a glass of wine, I'll have some of those dried liver treats- and some dog biscuits too. Oh and don't forget my liver cookies too!!"

"Oh yeah- the big dog wants some too- he's just too polite to make demands."

Fortunately, Dee has come to the rescue and delivered the goods while I blog. If Rene Descartes had been alive today, it would have been "I blog, therefore I am" instead of "I think, therefore I am." Well actually being a Frenchman in the 17th century, it was "Je pense donc je suis,".

I have been chided for not blogging enough while I've been on leave- which I suppose is true enough but I just haven't had much to say......until today.

This morning started with a bang- literally. At 3:30 this morning, the first flash of lightning and rumble of thunder gave me an early start to the morning. It had been raining off and on for a bit and given that our yard has a propensity to flood in heavy rain, I took a look off the deck and satisfied myself that everything was OK- not that I could do anything about it anyway if it wasn't. "Hey- would you mind turning off the rain for a bit? Dee just put some new plants in the garden yesterday and we don't want them to wash away!"

So I went back to bed knowing that my early morning ride was in jeopardy. "Boy Howdy!!" About 10 minutes later, the skies opened with a vengeance and the ensuing thunderstorm that went through dumped about 130 mm of rain (that would be about 5+ inches) in just over an hour. So the yard went from having a small puddle in the far back corner to this:

That room on the left with the louvred windows had about 15cm of water through it- and a lot of the wood chip mulch that we had put on the gardens had floated free to end up on the grassy area on the other side of the house:

And as of 5:30 this afternoon, the backyard looks like this (much like it did at 3:30 this morning only in sunlight):

And the mulch has all been raked, shoveled, forked, pushed, prodded, swept and thrown back into place in the gardens or into the wheelbarrow for distribution tomorrow.

So on a positive note, I won't need to drag the water hose and sprinkler around on the weekend- Oh and our dove orchids bloomed today as well:
The forecast is for more rain and thunderstorms tonight and tomorrow- I'm hoping they hold off for our coffee ride in the morning. I need a few extra km's to make 300 for the week although I had been hoping for 400. Might make it a bit of a challenge to hit 12000 for the year.

Back to work on Monday- the last fortnight has been very restful (in a cycling, not-being-at-work kind of way). And Dee has just found some info on a ride in New Zealand in January- the Taranaki Cycle Challenge. You know, I already have some leave booked off in January.....

Cheers- ride safe
BoaB