The calm before the storm. Literally. After I went back inside after taking some pictures, we had a doozy of a thunderstorm with rain and wind and a deluge that bent some of my plants, and created two furrows in my driveway from the force of the rain going downhill. It was a spectacular storm. The rain blew sideways, it came straight down, the gutters overflowed. The culvert was overflowing. So much rain all at once. And it lasted quite a while.

Thankfully, earlier in the day, I ordered a dehumidifier online and picked it up at a Home Depot about 30 minutes away from us. It was unbelievably hot and humid with yet another air quality warning. We carried the old dehumidifier upstairs from the basement and replaced it with the new one – this was about 1:30. Then the storm hit about two hours later. After the storm, dinner, and doing the dishes, we went down there to check it out and it was full of water. Hurrah! Don just went down there again – full of water. The timing couldn’t have been better.

I came home to Don mowing our front lawn, which is very long because of all the rain we’ve had. Without a working front wheel drive on the lawnmower, mowing is very difficult. I told him to take a break and I mowed a bit. But we can’t do it in one session as we normally do, so we’ll have to get back at it tomorrow. It’s way too wet out there today.

Today, we’re taking it easy because we are tuckered out.

I saw a couple of eastern swallowtails dining on the coneflowers. I was very happy, because I hadn’t seen any butterflies lately.

Flowers are blooming everywhere here and it’s lovely and I love summer normally, but I have to say it: I can’t wait for Fall. This has been an awful summer. Just plain awful. I can’t tell you the last time I sat on the porch. Between endless rain, high humidity, and smoke from the wildfires in Canada, there have been very few days where I could be outside for any length of time. I’m over it.

Stay safe.

Happy Wednesday.