the mysterious appearance of a puddle of water

Saturday morning. It's been a fairly quiet week. It's turned hot and humid or rainy and humid. The weather app says it storming right now in Wharton but not at my house. It's dark and nice and cool out so it must be raining somewhere close. Starting to hear rumbles of thunder. It did finally rain.

I happened to look out the window Friday morning to see the neighborhood roaming peacock in the neighbor's yard walking towards the big backyard which it crossed and then down our driveway about halfway when it turned around and walked back up and then cut across the Wicked Bitch of the West's lot and on down the street. Poor thing is ragged, had several bald spots and his tail feathers that drag on the ground were torn up.

Not much done out in the yard. Friday I worked out there about an hour before I was dripping sweat and hot. Pulled down a huge dead limb that had fallen but was hanging down caught up in the climbing rose canes and broke it up and tossed it in the truck and rigged up a new stake for one of the dragon fruit plants I have. 

When I came in it was 86˚ and 70% humidity. Ugh. I still have some periwinkles, a purple (I think) porter weed, and a flowering senna to get in the ground but it's either too wet, about to rain, raining, or in full sun and really hot while being too wet. Such a contrast to last year.

Sunday morning. Another night of lightning, thunder, and waves of hard rain starting around two and finally stopping more or less around six. Another sleepless night though this time I just gave up entirely when the dog got wound up and kept trying to lay on my pillow above my head which wouldn't have been so bad if she had just settled down and stayed still but that's not what happens. She's a perpetual motion machine. Instead of getting frustrated at her I just got up, moved to the recliner in my room, turned on the floor lamp and read while she moved from one side of me to the other, over and over.

I also went out into the garage several times during the bouts of hard rain to see if I could see where the water was coming in that created a puddle in the middle of the foam mat path from the door to the house to the big garage door. I laid those interlocking foam mats down because the concrete in the garage is smooth as glass and when it gets wet, it's very slick. Slippery slick.

Anyway, yesterday was this month's EarthLab presentation at Hesed House on growing roses. It rained pretty hard during the presentation and when I got home I saw this.

Third time in the last week or so. First time didn't think much about it, second time I checked the ceiling above which was not wet and showed no sign of leaking, pulled up the mats to see a crack in the slab that seemed to start where the wall of the house meets the wall of the garage and forms a corner on the outside that it appeared the water had oozed up from. So Friday I raked all the fallen leaves and twigs and branches away that accumulate there from sliding off the slope of the roof. When I got home yesterday and saw that the mats weren't just wet but there was an actual puddle on top I got the ladder, checked the ceiling again which was dry but the track for the garage door had one spot from which two drops of water were clinging. Head scratcher. Then I checked the corresponding corner in the house and the floor was wet where water had seeped in. OK, this is not good. Water was either seeping in from the slab in that corner or there is a leak in the roof and the water is coming down between the wall in the house and the wall in the garage except neither wall felt wet.

So Saturday I got the 8' ladder out and used the hoe to rake off as much debris out of the valley on the roof that makes that corner that I could reach. You might remember that I did this earlier and needed to get on the roof to finish which I did not do. Now it's worse and I still need to get on the roof to finish and I didn't do it yesterday either but it must be done. Then I used the hoe and the shovel to dig a little trench to direct the water away from the slab and along the edge of the concrete apron. 

Which is why I was out in the garage three times in the middle of the night during the hard rain to see if water was coming in and from where but it was still dry, still dry this morning and so I guess my efforts worked since we got twice as much rain last night, almost 2”, than earlier in the day though I still don't know how water got on top of the mats. Now I'll just have to add that to my list of things to maintain. Whoopie.

Since this is long enough I'll save what's blooming for the next post.