It’s been a soggy weekend. Louisville on Derby Day received two inches of rain. Derby hats, as you can see, were severely threatened.

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On Sunday, roads were closed all over the state. Dams washed away, menacing innocent towns. There are slim rivers running down my basement walls.

Yesterday morning at Mass, Father abandoned the sprinkling rite, whereby we all are doused/blessed with Holy Water, he said, “for the obvious reasons.” Apparently, when it comes to water, we’d been blessed enough. About the time he made this announcement, I noticed a rather fast-moving stream barreling down one of the enormous pillars inside the church.

This was at 9 am. By 8 o’clock that night, the rain still poured down. My children cheerfully (and I use that term loosely) performed their Sunday evening duties, taking out the trash and placing the cans at the curb for Monday-morning collection. They looked damp yet rather cute. The photo’s not much to speak of; I was standing on the porch trying to keep the camera dry and at such times I apparently lose focus.

Isn’t the grass a lovely shade of green, though? All verdant and growing, thanks to the nearly four inches of rain. Rain that, on a less cosmic scale, has prevented me from getting out there and getting dirty by grubbing in the garden.

Here you see the tense scene on my window sill.

These poor things have been languishing in an inch of soil in egg crates, waiting for their permanent home in the back yard. There, abundant weeds choke out the azaleas and sundry other plants. This despite the fact that I dumped an entire trailer-load of dirt back there last summer ON TOP of a bunch of cardboard to kill the weeds and,  more importantly, the mint. Short of a flame-thrower, though, there’s not much you can do with mint, except make a metric buttload of juleps.

Anyway, the heavens opened Saturday morning at around 6 am and apparently liked staying good and open. My deck is drenched and sad; no sunny annuals in porch boxes yet.

But I suppose it’s still early. There’s plenty of time for the world to dry out, the pollen to fill the air — and when that happens  I really, really know it’s springtime in Kentucky.