Take your choice: feast or famine. Unfortunately, where nature is involved - the environment and the weather we receive - there is no choice; we take what we get because there are no options. Sometimes things work out in our favour, other times they don't. Weather-sensitive areas of the world suffer droughts, deleteriously impacting agriculture, livelihoods and food availability as well as soil sustainability, or a normal year ensues and food is available for due consumption and for storage.

The same kind of situations impact on peoples' lives through floods threatening their ongoing occupation of homes and areas susceptible to flooding because they're located on floodplains. Currently, in Saskatchewan and Manitoba and throughout the U.S. where flooding becomes a yearly concern in spring, there have been mass evacuations as rivers become swollen beyond their capacity.

And for fortunate people like those who live in the Ottawa Valley, where the potential for earthquakes occasionally disturbs peace of mind, especially in particularly vulnerable areas built upon sand and clay which magnify the effects of earth movement, we do not so much fear overwhelming rains leading to floods. Area rivers do swell beyond their capacity to contain the temporary water build-up in spring melt, but flooding is generally contained to specific areas. Still, the soil conditions added to extreme water saturation often lead to catastrophic landslides. No area is exempt from its own very special environmental-climatic conditions.

This year the Ottawa Valley broke all previous records for April rainfall, and the rain is still continuing. The impact is minimal other than the annoyance factor which everyone can live with. Yesterday we had a brief break in an all-day rain, and we hastened to get out for our daily walk in our nearby ravine, where the creek at the bottom was in full flood, and the trails underfoot were slippery mush. An hour into our circuit a warning of rain resumption was recognized in the onset of a light drizzle and we opted for a short-cut that took us another 20 minutes to emerge from the woods.

Once we settled ourselves back at home again, after rinsing the mud off our little dogs' legs, the heavens unleashed another downpour, culminating later in the evening in a firestorm of lightning and thunder claps; nature applauding another faultless performance.