One reason why I skived off work yesterday...

After only about two days of rain, we were once again having flood time here -- slightly distracting, if only for the rush of water.


Once the water had subsided, there were lots more birds about the garden: bluetits, blackbirds, robins, wee brown jobs I don't know the name of, the ubiquitous herring gulls, of course, but no sign of jackdaws -- everything has a silver lining...

Two days after the flood -- looking back...

Hello again
I needed a day to recover from the excitement of the flood, and then I had to get some work done and attend a lovely chamber concert last night here in Oban, so it's been a couple of days.
Here are a few more pix of the flooding and of the trash that's come down on the torrent.
A couple of views from my garden shed:No, I wasn't all that shaken, but the wind was tearing at the shed (and I'm still learning to use my camera properly). Still, I like the colours here. Not sure yet what the damage to the lawnmower is.
The wind and the water conspired to overturn our almost-empty wheeliebins (trash containers; each household has its own and they are all supposed to congregate in friendly agglutinations inside the so-called bin enclosures):The gunk that came out of those bins, and the smell, were unspeakable.
And I think we could all have done without these water features at the bottom of our gardens:If you click on the photo above, you will see a metal fence set into the stone wall. It was making ominous creaking sounds as I was taking that photo, and I was truly afraid the pressure of all the debris behind it, and a foot of water, was going to breach the fence -- a solid, heavy-duty corrugated steel fence with sturdy verticals and strong horizontals. It didn't yield but it has a noticeable bent in it where one of the verticals gave way by about an inch.
A dozen yards downstream, the "burn" called the Black Lynn disappears into a culvert beneath a car park:There wasn't much clearance on Saturday...
The day after, the Black Lynn flowed much calmer and clear-watered within its designated concrete trough, but there was a lot of mysterious-looking debris caught upstream of the footbridge, like this plank with beautifully rounded edges that sticks out of a tangle of branches and twigs and plain junk. Was it once a bench?Or this yellow unidentifiable object:
From my kitchen window, I could see a long piece of roundwood, probably an unused telegraph pole, lying across the cleared patch of what used to be "my" wilderness and should be a Community Garden come spring. This morning the "Garden Brigade" turned up in their reflecting overalls to clear some of the debris and junk that has washed up and got stuck in the burn upstream from the wee footbridge. It's quite a collection, some of it still useable:It was a gloriously sunshiny day until, quite suddenly, at about four pm, we had a flurry of wet snow. It only lasted a few minutes, but was a taste of winter a bit on the early side for everyone. Still, my Iona nasturtiums are doing ok: TTFN and be well. Peace!

... and the biggest flood so far

Hiya
We live in interesting times.
It has just stopped raining after hours of relentless, heavy rain. Major flooding all over the Oban area.
Our gardens are flooded and so is my shed - we'll see what the lawnmower has to say about that once it's dried out, whenever that may be.
Pix taken about an hour ago -- it's much worse now.
The metal fence in the stone wall has lots of debris blocked up upstream and there's a waterfall about knee-high. I am concerned it will give and there will be a rush of water flooding downstream, i.e. buildings in the Nelson Road area.
Back soon -- I'm going out to buy wellies. Borrowed my neighbour's to evacuate stuff from my shed.