The water is down 14.5 inches this morning from the peak flood. Another 3 inches will expose the garage floor and gravel driveway, then the yard can start showing up. There is a long way to go. The rotting smell is at gag levels, and I wish I could get away from it. At least the truck is usable again. I hope the weekend doesn’t undo all the water receding. My hands are still almost useless, but they are better. I maybe able to grip small objects in a couple days.
I don’t think a lot of people realize how stinky a flood is.
When you feel better, you want one of us to come pressure wash you ??
I’m glad your hands are better. 
I didn’t walk into the flood to measure my marking stick. The water is a couple inches below the driveway. At least for now I can dress in the house and walk out to the truck. It’s ready to rain anytime now and the forecast as of last night has rain for a week. My flood isn’t traveling down the Mississippi. It is going into Lake Michigan via the Fox. Portage is on the Great Lakes and Mississippi drainage basin dividing line, with the Fox being lower than the Wisconsin river. Most of the drainage from the city flood went down the Fox river. The Baraboo river and Lake Delton went to the Mississippi. They have a large flood control levy on the Wisconsin and nothing on the Fox.
It’s real easy to spot flood victims in the store. Were the ones that look like pigs. The tourists are the ones that dress fancier than normal people and mumble about not being able to get the specialty booze they want.
I was wondering how you were doing, HD. (Missed your post from yesterday.) Hope the next rains are light and the water continues receding.
GT
Did the rain move off for you, Harmonious Discord? The sun is shining here. Channel 3 is saying rain this afternoon, but I don’t know how much.
The sky is half clouds. I hope to stick the high volume pump discharge in the driveway culvert pipe, and clear it out some. Maybe I can remove the mud from the driveway with it too. I’m not sure I will do this since I’m clean and dry for once, and it feels good.
The residents at Pardeeville that need to use hwy 22 are out of luck, because nonresidents didn’t stay off it. Now hwy 22 is closed again. They even had semis go on it. One side of the road is missing, and it had a low weight limit for residents to use it. They need to make it $10,000 a pop to go on roads like that so the people stay the hell off, when their not residents, and obey the weight limit. Hwy 22 is what kept the flood waters from cascading down the Fox river.
I checked out the dam at the old canal lock. The Fox definitely was back flowing up the canal, because there is currently only a foot drop over the dam. i figured that was the case, because at this time of the year the canal is normally a stinking quagmire of debris. It’s not so bad at this point and has water.
The flood is down 22 inches as of now. We don’t have a good current going through the yard now, so the water is turning sour.
I have the mud washed off the gravel driveway now. I just cleaned up and I’m not doing contaminated clean up for the rest of the day. There’s a good chance the flood could go back in all the receded places this weekend anyway. I have fix the basement window screen where the hoses are coming out. It’s a direct route for mosquitoes. The mosquitoes are in large numbers where ever the sun don’t shine. The city won’t do preventive spraying until they migrate into high and dry downtown, at which point it’s to late.
Almost 2 feet!
Have you gotten very much rain yet today? The radar doesn’t look so bad up that way.
The flood is down 27 inches now. The remaining water is getting very gross. It’s all getting to be like marsh slime water. In the past it took about a month for the soil to sweeten after flooding. That’s with occasional rain to wash through the soil too. Many of the plants that were on the highest ground died, because the soil was saturated. Two more inches of water, would have covered every last bit of ground in the yard. The niece isn’t even two years old always wanted to play outside, to feel and touch the flowers. She’s going to be very disappointed when there’s nothing out side. I can’t even talk about how disappointed losing most of my plants, and having the garden bed frames float away is. I used up most of the lumber I cut for trellising in the garden to fight off the flood. The peas managed to flower and set pods that were partially filled out, before they completely died. You couldn’t eat them anyway. I ripped them out along with the foxglove and my delphinium bed. The delphinium was about 5 feet tall, when it started to die and rot off. I don’t know if the peonies will be around next year or if they will all rot off. The foliage is dead on all but one plant. I iris bed is full of yellowing plants. I think they will live. I hope all my daffodils don’t rot. I had more than 500 of them. I think they have a good chance of not rotting. I have a couple trays of annuals that stayed alive. I saved some of the lettuce in a tray, but the flood stayed up and they were exposed to the flood water, so those have to be thrown out. The grand total harvest for all the food I planted this year was 2 bowls of lettuce.
No rain yesterday or today, or even all week! Yee haw! Once again, an absolutely gorgeous day, so far, though I haven’t heard the forecast yet.
I feel so bad for Harmonious Discord and other people in his neck of the woods. I don’t live near water, so the net result for me, like I said before, is a lush lawn and beautiful flowers, though I was late to plant them. I don’t have a garden per se either. I planted some tomatoes and jalapeno peppers in a whiskey barrel that my dad drilled holes in the bottom of to facilitate draining, so those should be safe even if we do get deluged again.
My heart goes out to the people in Missouri and Iowa who have been hit most recently.
I feel for you; I know I get horribly disappointed when my beautiful plants all get trashed in a hailstorm, and they come back pretty well from that; I know I would be very upset at all of them getting destroyed. Poor plants. 
Right now there is a mild rain and the flood is down 34 inches. The smell is on pare with a dead deer carcass when you get about 5 feet away.
The days update is the flood is down 37.5 inches now. I hope it continues. I’m estimating about a 4 foot flood was in the yard. The water table should be lower than that. A small amount of the stink went with the rain. So now at least it’s not like being next to a dead deer carcass.
Onward and upward.
How’s your hands doing today?
I still can’t get my thumb closer than an inch from my palm. I can’t trust that something gripped between thumb and index finger won’t fall, so I have to be careful what I pick up and how. One hand must be under held object at all times. This is when I fumble everything I do.
You could use this fumbling as an opportunity to develop a slapstick Keystone-Cops-esque comedy routine, maybe? (Just trying to see the silver lining. Hope your hands feels better soon :()
I apologize for my density, but I’ve been through this entire thread and I still don’t understand: Why aren’t your hands working properly? You mention swelling, various injuries from being knocked around in the water, and a tetanus shot. I can’t seem to put the pieces together.
I’ve only been back on the boards a couple years, and have been dealing with a major illness for a much longer time. I’ve improved greatly in the last three years, but the immune response with the swelling is exasperated by physical work, especially like hammering which I was doing. I need to stop doing the physical activities when the swelling starts up or it gets worse and worse. I really had little choice during this flood. Another day of having to start the gas water pump with the pull start and I wouldn’t have been able too. Now all I can do is baby my hands for however long it takes and don’t handle expensive breakable stuff. As for the flood injuries they’re healing, but are not the root cause of my problems. You live with what you have, it’s not a choice, so you’d better make the best of it. You don’t need to say sorry you’re sick or anything. I seldom bring up my illness so as not to be a whining social pariah.
I hope I didn’t put you on the spot by asking about it. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that you have time for some TLC and the swelling goes on down.