Floods, Freezes, Friday Food and Student Activity

Flooding is very serious in the Kalona, IA area, as I'm learning via Facebook.  I'm seeing posts from my cousin Evan's wife and her sister-in-law, Carolyn--married to Landon.  Evan and Laverta's house is close to the English River, as is the home of Evan's parents, Joe and Mary, my aunt and uncle.  I've slept in Joe and Mary's basement several times.  It's a friendly place, with ticking and chiming sounds from the watch and clock repair shop that occupies part of the basement.

Evan and Laverta's basement is flooded.  She spent hours carrying things upstairs.  Cut off from others by road closings, and with a husband confined to a wheelchair, this must have been a desperate and lonely operation.  She posted, saying that water was now coming in every window, it was a foot deep in the basement, and the sump pump had quit.  The house had gone cold when the furnace was flooded, there was a stiff wind blowing, and snow was predicted.

My sister Linda saw somewhere that the English River was to crest this morning at 21 feet.  Flood stage is 14 feet.

Carolyn posted that at Joe and Mary's house, the basement floor buckled under the pressure of saturated soil.  They could hear jars of canned food breaking, after giving up the struggle to save things and keep the water out.

i heard several references to the flood of 1993, and no one believed it would get worse than that, but it has.

I love the setting of Joe and Mary's house.  It's high above the river, but in plain sight of it--among trees and an abundance of birds.  Before they decided to build there, the elevation was carefully established as being high enough to not be threatened by flooding.  Carolyn had told me they knew that all of Kalona would get flooded before they did.  I wonder how the town is faring now.

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I've been up since five, and have watched the temperature drop over the past hour.  It's now at 29 degrees, under a clear sky--at least what I can see of it at 6:30 with daylight having dawned.  Hearing about Iowa's flooding makes freezing seem a little simpler in some ways.  For us it's the loss of potential; for them it's the loss of things they've "owned" and enjoyed for a long time.

I still grieve for all the farmers and gardeners I know and love.  Two years of drought and heat and now a late freeze, makes the potential loss of the wheat crop feel like a very cruel blow.

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We had a small bit of panic yesterday at school when Norma discovered that the Friday hot lunch  "void" was for today and next week instead of next week and the week following as the rest of us thought.  We could have of course, just all brought our lunch from home as we usually do on other days, but what's the fun in that?  We scrambled and came up with a plan during the final hour of school.  The three girl students from the Richard Y. household offered to provide fresh-baked hot bread.  The rest of us will bring 2 cups each of a vegetable soup ingredient.  People who want desert can bring their own.  People sitting in one section of the learning center bring broth or tomato juice, another section provides meat, and the two remaining sections provide vegetables.  Everything is to be cooked or parboiled before it's brought.

When I was explaining the plan, one concerned student asked what would happen if everyone brought celery and onions for the soup.  I said I thought that we would have a good attitude and an adventurous spirit and [enjoy the food].  I can't remember for sure how I finished that sentence.

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We're also doing a spring spruce-up and mulching of the landscaped areas around the school building today.  Every time we do this, I wish that we had yews along the back of the north bed by the school entrance.  We planted some there, and they did not survive the first season--perhaps because that perfect size was not as well adapted to our growing conditions as a bigger-mature-sized variety would have been.  The landscaper who originally recommended them also had survival problems with the ones he installed.  We hoped to avoid the need for annual pruning.  I guess we accomplished that, but not in the way we had hoped.  At first, the spouting was not functioning right and when it rained, copious amounts of water dumped into the corner of the bed.  That might have been what actually killed the yews, since they will not tolerate standing water.  The beds around the church entrance need a little updating too.  Making sure the low-pressure watering system is in good repair and being operated properly seems to be needed also.