Last week's heat wave has passed and it rained yesterday, and rained, and rained. The roof is leaking around one of our skylights and the ceiling feels soggy.

Overnight, I could hear the creek thundering away like never before (and it's gotten pretty big in the past). This morning when I looked out the kitchen window, I could see the creek, which I can't usually. When I went outside I could see the water stretching away across our neighbours' yard and forcing a new path for itself at the bottom of our garden. It was no longer a creek - it was a river!

The width was amazing, but so was the depth, with trees in the middle standing up, many plants knocked over, lots of large logs and debris, and the bridges submerged. Looking across at the neighbours' place I could see their pots (usually on the next level up) sticking out of the water, and I figure their garden furniture must have been underwater or washed away - it looked like Isengard after the ents had visited! It's hard not to feel a small glimmer of satisfaction, given the intensive land-clearing, poisoning and clearing they've done in the garden, with scarcely a native plant or large tree left. There's hardly a weekend when they're not running a wood-chipper or spraying poison (many of the trees I've planted near the border have died as a result.

Anyway, Jill rang to say that once the water had subsided all their meticulous creekbank work (stones and chicken-wire) was entirely washed away, as was much of their lower garden, and things were very eroded - which is pretty much what you'd expect once the trees were removed. The creek had evidently swept across our back lawn as well, leaving mud and silt, but pretty much everything else looking okay (plenty of plants to hold it all together).