What's that wet stuff?

Woke up in the middle of the night and it was pouring rain.... absolutely pouring..... fell back to sleep and woke up at 6:30 and it was still pouring rain...... fell back to sleep again, woke up at 8:00 and the rain was still pouring. Couldn't believe I slept that late, and couldn't believe all of that rain.

First thing I did was look out the balcony door and (wonder of wonders!) the shallow end of the pond looked like it was nearly filled up. It rained on and off all day long, but I was so busy for most of the morning and afternoon that I forgot to look out to see how much water was in the pond by the time the rain stopped. I can't remember when we've had such a cloudy, rainy, drippy, dreary (beautiful! perfect!) day. As I've said in here before... I will never again complain about a rainy day.

We had a busy weekend with company...... last night, our friends H & K came over for dinner. We've been trying to get together with them for a couple of months now, but they've been out of town... and when they were in town, we were out of town. So last night was our chance to see them before they go out of town yet again. H & K won't be able to come to the Halloween party, but they saw all the decorations last night and K said that one of the 'door prizes' should be my "Haunted House Birdhouse." Not likely. I found that old birdhouse in a yard sale a few years back, and bought it just to turn it into a haunted house for our Halloween parties. I had seen those in the magazines and in the stores, and the prices seemed just too high for the little bit of decoration they had on them.

As always, as my Aunt Dolly would do, I looked at those birdhouses-turned-haunted and said I can do that myself. And I did.... and if I do say so myself, the one I made is nicer than the more expensive ones I'd seen in the stores, plus I had fun making it. All you need is an interesting birdhouse, some Halloween miniatures (bats, ghosts, pumpkins, witches, black cats, etc) and a glue gun. "You can do just about anything with a good glue gun," my husband's mother used to tell me.

This afternoon, we had one of the neighbors over for lunch. I had cooked extra food last night, thinking I'd have left-overs for the next couple of days, and then it turned out that my husband called J and invited him over for lunch today so the left-overs turned into almost an exact duplicate of last night's dinner, with a different side dish tossed together this morning.

Inbetween lunch and dessert, I happened to look out into the yard and there was a huge raccoon out by the gazebo. In the middle of the day? I thought raccoons slept all day long and went hunting around for food after dark. (I guess this particular raccoon didn't read the rule book.) It had stopped raining when I saw the raccoon, and the chickens were out in the yard. (The raccoon wouldn't have to look far for food if he caught sight of my hens.)

I went out to look for the chickens, my husband and J went after the raccoon, but he/she (?) found a spot underneath the gazebo and there it went. Must be nice and dark and cozy under the gazebo-- perfect sleeping-spot for a raccoon. We don't know if the raccoon is still under there, but we've got the cage-trap set up, with some fruit inside of it..... hopefully, the raccoon will go after the fruit, get caught in the cage, and then my husband will drive it to the lake in the next town and release it in the woods. Lakeside living. What more could a raccoon want?

As for the chickens.... they've been inside the coop all afternoon. Thankfully, it was a cloudy, drippy day and they didn't seem to mind. After they followed me into the coop, I didn't hear any noise from them, so they seemed to be content in there, tucked in out of the rain. I went into the coop late this afternoon with some vegetable scraps and half of a banana for Scarlett (she loves bananas) and they didn't try to get out of the coop. I'm hoping the raccoon finds a new home tomorrow.... I can't leave the chickens inside the coop all day every day.

Today was the first day we haven't seen the sun.... not a drop of sunlight all day long. Just clouds, just rain. We needed a day like today, and we need many many more to fill up all the empty ponds. A perfect day. A perfectly good soaking, pouring, rainy, drippy day.