The dark time

Sunrise is at 7:49 this morning and sunset at 4:17, not nearly enough light for these unhappy monster jade plants. They've been sitting there since October hogging the window. Jades can squeak by in a dark, warm house if you don't water them over the winter. (Well, maybe just once to keep them barely alive.)

In the summer they live outside in the shady basement stairwell and love it, because each fall they get heavier to lug inside.  Next year they'll be too big for any spot left in the house. Then what? I guess we can build a greenhouse, or move to a spacious house with lots of windows and a nice view. Hey, that sounds good! We will be moving in 2016 for the health and well-being of our jade plants.

We've had so much rain and so many storms in December, even the natives around here are getting tired of it. The rivers in the lowlands are subsiding because it's finally snowing like crazy in the mountains, instead of raining and running off.  I didn't have time to get out to the foothills last week, not that we could ride anyway. But I miss being outdoors, seeing my friends and the horses.

The Snoqualmie Falls is always beautiful but awesome in flood stage. At "Major" flood stage, it runs at 56,800 cubic feet a second. How much water is that?  A good problem for Dave's math students.

Of course they would probably just look it up on convert-me.com.
Answer: over 425,000 gallons per second, or 1.5 billion gallons per hour.

The drought that seemed endless last summer is history. 2015 is now above normal for rainfall in Western Washington.  We've had over 40 inches of rain for the year and still counting.