what weather!

Let's say it ended when they changed the wind warning to a severe wind warning. That expires at 5 tomorrow morning. It began early afternoon yesterday with rain. I finally put out the rain gauge late this morning and it had 3/4 of an inch in it by 4:00. The almanac said .7 inch yesterday, so I estimate we got at least two inches total. We have clay soil and it's pretty wet out there. The stream (actually I guess you could call it a wadi) through the woods was running briskly and the goose pond is completely full. We have a dead tree trunk leaning over the road just upstream of our electric line. We've been waiting for it to topple for a couple years. Tonight will have perfect conditions for it to go—windy and soaked soil—though it hasn't yet. The power company won't take it down until it actually falls, either. Needless to say, we didn't get much outdoor work done today, but I did get out to do the grocery shopping so Val could take a nap. She's fighting off a touch of the vapours. I have got to spend some time this afternoon reading more about poetry construction. Most of the material has been rather obstruse lately, and not things I particularly care to try, or bother you with. We're covering things like rubiyat (singular is rubai), rhyme royal, ottava rima, and Spencerian stanzas. These forms are characterized by their pretty-much not memorable rhyme schemes. The preceding chapter, btw, was about rhyme and almost-rhyme: assonance, consonance, and slant rhyme, plus a few others. Appropriately enough, this part of the book includes a good-sized section on bad poetry. I'm about to embark on the ballad form, and I think I'll like that.