Washout

Yesterday afternoon and evening I decided to bite the bullet: I put my oscillating sprinkler in my garden and let it go for about an hour and a half. This is no small thing. I hate using that sprinkler in my garden because it covers way too large an area, soaking my neighbor's house if I don't carefully adjust the water pressure, which varies quite a lot over the course of an hour and a half even if I don't use the laundry machine or dishwasher (which I did). But, the water situation in the garden was getting pretty dire, so I decided it was worth the hassle.

Now, I have always said that the best way to guarantee it will rain tomorrow is for me to water my lawn (yeah, we'll pretend that's why I never do it). Yesterday, in addition to watering my garden, I left clothes on the clothesline overnight, which is just a double-dog-dare. Naturally, this morning we had a tremendous thunderstorm accompanied by really fast rainfall. N said if I'd left the car windows open it would've been a hurricane.

I stuck my head outside after it blew over to check if any of my plants had survived and found them doing relatively well. It is definitely a mess out there, though. The mulch on several of my paths has been completely washed out into the yard or onto the sidewalk, and an unplanted area next to my small squash plants (which I expect them to grow into) got washed out into the path.
(See the hose laying out in all these photos? After I finished watering the garden I hauled my sprinkler out into the yard and set it up so I could easily water the grass first thing in the morning. LOL.)