SIMPLE BEAUTY

We've had unusually warm weather the last few days, resulting in a big "spring" runoff.  Our driveway is at the lowest point of our country road.  The culvert under the driveway cannot handle the amount of water flooding down into it, so the flood spreads over the driveway and over the road.

You see the water completely covering the right hand lane.  Our driveway is somewhere underneath all that water.  Where the flow spread out on the lower end of the driveway it froze overnight into this beautiful collection of crystal forms.

The water is still flowing through the culvert, down the ditch a few more feet and into a culvert that goes under the road and into the neighbour's pond on the other side.

You can see the metal culvert surfacing on the left side of the water ditch.

We're told that there was a similar melt in the middle of January.  Spring melt is important to us; it's what fills our dugout from which we water the Garden Centre plants in the spring and the landscape during  the summer.  About 2003 there had been three years of drought and the dugout (a man-made pond at a low point on the property)was dry to the bottom.  We do have a well that we can pump from, but that water is too salty to use on potted plants.  So we're thankful for enough snow in the winter to give a good runoff in the spring!