Crazy weather

As GABROEN posted last week (see the post Floodgates), it felt as if someone up in the heavens was pouring his/her/its heart out - I guess the gender of that someone is a matter of religion, belief system or personal preference. Anyway, we got over 4 inches of rain in about 16 hours, strangely but fittingly coinciding with the last 16 hours of Marjolein's life. That amount of downpour was too much to handle for the surroundings, and we got major flooding.

We came back on Thursday from a second trip to the homelands in two weeks, and there still were some flooded areas, but most of the water had drained and saturated the dried out soil around here. Since GABROEN's return, the weather has been pretty nice. Spring has reluctantly sprung upon us. Not that the trees have any leaves yet. But there is a certain balminess in the air, and daffodils and hyacinths as the first spring flowers. But the most obvious sign of spring: we have lake effect fog. Every spring, when the land is warming up but Lake Michigan still is cold as hell, we have days of dense fog for about a 1-mile stretch along the lakefront. So lakeside living does have its downsides. The weather around here is crazy, but not boring.