I love our old house and our neighborhood.  We have lots of old and large trees on our property and the properties around us.  We also have gutters on our house.  Leaves and debris…meet gutters…gutters – debris.

You see, in the spring-time, the black locusts make thousands of little leaves and flowers that fall off, oh…um…about this time of year.  They are small enough that they are not stopped by gutter guards so they accumulate in the gutters.  I clean them every year but if my timing is not right, they build up and absorb just the right amount of water from light rains to form a great organic gutter-dam when the heavy rains come.

Anyhow, the dam did its dam thing last night and backed up the gutter right above one of the window wells to a basement window.  We noticed water coming in the house and I looked up and saw water in the window.  It was like my own little aquarium!  I ran outside in the pouring rain (and I mean pouring) to clean out all of the gutters.  I really hate climbing a ladder in the rain but I was able to break all of the dams on all of the gutters which washed all of the dam junk out into the yard.

I had to go back and dip the water from the window well as best I could.  I guess I could have waited until it fully drained into the house but that didn’t seem like a good option.  By the time I was all done, I was soaked through to the bone…and then it stopped raining.

I am going to buy a new blade for my chainsaw today…