It Can Stop Anytime!

One of the joys of "Ketelsen East", especially after surviving the "hotter than hell pre-monsoon season of 2017" in AZ, is that it rains on a regular basis! There is nothing like opening your windows and listening to a summer storm pass and lull you to sleep. Of course, the more violent ones with close lightening and thunder might cause you to re-close that window, but still - the rarity of a cool summer night with windows open is a real joy.

Of course, the payment one makes while living next to a river is that river will rise! Normally our little homestead lies about 40 yards from the bank of the Fox River, but the other morning after another 2" dumping overnight, I awoke to blue skies, but the body of water only about 20 feet from the house! 


I haven't worried much though - it was about this high in the Fall of 2008, shortly after our marriage. We got over 10" of rain over the long weekend and it quickly jumped to this same level. The photo at left shows a comparison image of the canoe racks the camp uses. The image at the top is from 2008 and the lower from the weekend. It appears this cycle is an inch or two higher than that one.

It is a little disconcerting to look out the sunroom windows and ONLY see water, but even with that last 20 feet to the house, it would have to come up a good foot to 18 inches to get into the house. We don't have a basement (unlike some nearby houses), and the drone of water pumps can be heard at night when it is quiet! At right is an HDR image, combining 3 different exposures, so that the fruit basket isn't black, nor the outside an overexposed white, showing our truly "riverside view"!

The other advantage of a high river is that we get dozens of carp grazing in the yard! They seem to like the grass, seemingly to wrench it out of the ground along the shallow edge. Walking up to them carefully, they appear to be up to 18" long and up to 5" wide, sometimes in groups of 3 or 4.  Soon enough as the water recedes, there will be a plethora of fish trying to get back to the main stream. I've tried before to catch them by hand and it is harder than you can imagine! A large fishing net helps, and I rescued a few, but mostly the egrets and herons come in and feast in the yard! Melinda witnessed a heron swallow a fish almost as large as he was, and was barely able to get off the ground again! Might be fun to try to record those photons!



Since these photos on Saturday, the Fox seems to have dropped a couple inches today even though it rained hard yesterday.  Looks like the peak has passed!