April showers and a Moorland Blanket...

I'm thinking most of Indiana is seeing showers and storms usher in the month of April.  After last night's storm passed through, and as we wait for more over the next couple of days, there is a welcome cleanness to the air.  And the grass is suddenly and brilliantly verdant.  In the city park, where a creek cuts through in several directions, spring flooding is a pretty normal sight.  

Never mind for a moment how clean the air seems.  There's a lot of mud in that water, and every spring I imagine how tedious, and hopefully satisfying, it must be to clean up the mess. Every spring when I see this park under water, I think through how the clean-up would be accomplished - as if I had to do it myself. 

I remember a couple of years ago walking through the park on a beautiful spring day and seeing the grounds keepers working hard shoveling and raking mulch on all the unpaved walking places and around all the trees and bushes. The very next day we got a heavy rain and the park flooded like pictured above.  I imagined how discouraging the whole thing must have been to all the workers who had made it beautiful and ready for the public to enjoy.  But when I took a walk soon after the water receded, there they were - seemingly fine, working at it again.  I suppose it's all in a day's work, and that means a paycheck, so maybe it wasn't as discouraging to them as I thought it should be.

As long as no one is hurt, and property damage is minimal, these heavy spring rains and floods feel like little more than a rite of passage each spring in the Midwest (or at least, that's how I experience it).  And the ground moisture, even a bit of flooding this early, is welcome for all growing things. 

That said, our county (and our little town) did experience a devastating flood in June of 2008.  While our personal misfortune in that flood seemed minor compared to others' losses, our house at the time took on some water in the half basement family room.  The account of that experience is here, here, here, and here.  Even our limited damage was an expensive mess to clean up and repair.  Something like that leaves its mark, to be sure.  Now, when the rains come down and the floods come up, we breathe a sigh of relief when the storms pass and our house remains high and dry.

The sedum are looking lush

I seem to remember that last year I wanted to transplant some of these sedum plants to the sunny side of the house come spring - just to see if the flowers would be a different shade, or vividness, or something like that.  Now that spring is here, this seems like a lot of unnecessary work.  I hate that I'm questioning my strength and energy.  If not this spring, perhaps another...

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On a different note, I'm realizing I never posted a finished blanket I crocheted a while back.  It's a baby or toddler size Moorland Blanket, pattern by Lucy at Attic 21. 

It's an easy pattern that provides many opportunities for playing with colors.  I chose the safe route of staying (somewhat) in the same color family. 

Doing a rough (but probably close) estimate on the amount of yarn I used,  I figured this blanket took about 3 1/2 skeins worth of worsted weight yarn that comes in 355 yards/skein.  Or 1,274 yards total - approximately.   That information is probably not that interesting to you, but for me, who's currently on a quest to work through yarn, every yard counts! 

Happy April!