After the Floods: Hummingbirds and Butterflies

I have not told you this yet, but on Friday around mid-day, central Pennsylvania was hit with some major thunderstorms that resulted in flooding throughout our region. The waters rose, some roads were flooded out and closed, and things got pretty scary for a while.

You've heard of the saying, "You can't get there from here." Yes, it was pretty much like that. It was a Friday, and I don't usually work on Fridays. In the end, I was glad we didn't have to be anywhere. We stayed home, hung out with the cat, made chicken soup, read our books.

At the craziest point in the deluge, my husband was on the front porch yelling for me to come and see, and so we both got umbrellas and went out into the yard. There was a river running through the backyard, down behind our shed, into the front yard, and into a drainage ditch that sent it all under the road and into the neighbor's yard.

It was the most water I have ever seen on our property since I bought it in 2004. Here's more: I am one whose memory goes back a long ways, and I have not seen a rainier, wetter period in central Pennsylvania since Hurricane Agnes in 1972!!!!

But then the rain ended, and we went out into the yard to assess the devastation. We were fortunate. There was a path where the river had been, but the shed held tight, and the house weathered the storm just fine too. We did not have water inside anywhere. Whew!

But the storm did knock over a bunch of jewelweed (orange touch-me-not) in the yard. We have a very healthy crop of it this year, and you can see some of it in the photo above. So I went out in the afternoon and with 20-some trellises and shepherd's hooks, I tied up all of the plants that had fallen. For the pollinators, you know.

And it was indeed a great day for pollinators in the sunshine that followed the big storms. I had cleaned and refilled the hummingbird feeders on Friday morning, and they were ready for business. They really got a workout on this day, as several hummingbirds came to feast. The one in the shot above is a female enjoying the backyard feeder.

I was sitting near the butterfly garden reading my book, when a huge monarch butterfly came by and began checking out the joe pye weed. It stayed a long time and I was able to get a number of decent, close shots. You may see one of those in the extras.

So let's consider this a celebration of pollinators, after the storm, and after the floods. The soundtrack song: Mumford & Sons, After the Storm.