Our name is MUD

'Mud, glorious mud!' are the lyrics that used to be caroled by the comedy team of Flanders and Swann back in the day. It was an amusing song about the salubrious effects of this yucky substance. Well, Flanders and Swann, thou shouldst be living at this hour. And living on Rood Hill Road!

Following the snowiest winter on record we have just had the rainiest couple of days up here on Rood Hill Road since the biblical flood, turning our picturesque retreat into an oozy, goozy mess.

Rood Hill Farm has stood on the south side of this hill since 1780 on very solid ground. Only last summer I had my circular driveway topped with what is known in the trade as  'Airport Mix' to further strengthen its resistance to weather. But this recent display of flowing water and melting snow by Mother Nature took the cake- or at least part of the driveway.

The road descends a hill just beside my home in what is, in dry weather, a charmingly scenic manner. For the past several days it has been turned into a lava-like sea of mud. Fortunately for me, the other end of my driveway has been able to hold its own so I can come and go with only minor wallowing in the muck.

Seeing pictures on TV of homes that are in water up to the windows, I feel fortunate that I live on the side of a hill where the water, however furious,at least runs downhill, taking only part of the roadway with it, leaving this old house standing high and fairly dry. That John Rood was a crafty old man when he built on the south side of this hill all those years ago. It's as if he knew that in 2011, Aprés moi le déluge would require true grit!