It happened last week, on Tuesday. The 6th of May 2025. Not only was this the heaviest rain of this year so far, but quite possibly the most intense rainy day I have ever experienced in my hometown.
It had been a long time since the last time I felt inspired to photograph something in my yard and garden. Something extraordinary, or at least highly unusual, had to happen for me to take the camera and start documenting what's going on in this place I'm spending most of my time.
It started with the roses. I mean, the rain was pretty heavy, almost unusually heavy, but the way the roses looked in that rain is what triggered my interest in the overall atmosphere.
The next thing that caught my attention was another plant, a wild, self-seeding one that grows on my terrace, right under a rugged, makeshift bench made of some obsolete concrete blocks and old planks.
As the rain was getting heavier, the raindrops were getting faster and crazier while rebounding from the terrace. A joy to photograph.
The plant in question is the common sowthistle (Sonchus oleraceus).
This photograph was taken a bit later, when the level of water on my terrace had nicely risen and the cover of the drainage manhole started floating like a little raft.
In the following shot ...
... the focus is on the roses again.
Aren't they lovely when soaked in the rain?
My car is often parked near those roses. The car, the old-fashioned metal garbage can that isn't used for garbage anymore, and that corner of the yard in general, definitely isn't something I could feel the need to photograph on an ordinary day or in sunny weather. Only on that Tuesday, in the rain, I saw a bit of magic in that mundane scene. The shine of the car in the overall gloom, the gray of the metal, combined with the gray afternoon, everything looked so surprisingly stylish.
As the water on the terrace was rising, I photographed another small, self-seeding plant that grows on my terrace. The scientific name of the species is Veronica arvensis. At the time the following photograph was taken ...
... the rain had slowed down, but I needed the gardening boots to keep my feet dry while walking across the terrace.
In photographs, the intensity of the rain is best shown by the droplets against the dark background that rebound on the terrace.
If you compare this shot to the previous one, you'll get a good idea of what I'm talking about.
Here you can take a look through the fence mounted on the wall that separates the microcosm of my yard from the rest of the neighborhood.
This is Farabuto. Yep, that's the name of the cat.
At some point, he woke up and left his favorite place in the kitchen to see what was up on the outside.
Unlike other cats with whom I share the house and garden, Farabuto loves the rain and water in general. He doesn't mind getting wet from time to time.
You can see a few more roses in this shot.
When I photographed this Erigeron bonariensis, another self-seeding plant that grows in the narrow space between the plates of the terrace, the water in front of my house flowed away through the drainage pipes.
Less than an hour later, the weather was sunny ...
... the green part of my yard was still flooded ...
... and Farabuto was nosing around the temporary little pond under the fig and pomegranate trees.
The flooding drove out into the open quite a few small arthropods usually hidden from sight. Here you can see a pill bug resting and drying on the dandelion leaves, surrounded by water.
Another pill bug of the same species, Armadillidium vulgare, has climbed the stem of some small, gracile herbaceous plant to stay out of water.
This one was shedding the old exoskeleton amid the flooding.
For a minute, an earwig nymph (Forficula auricularia) was sharing the saving stem with an ant.
Here you can see the earwig descending the stem that once held a multitude of dandelion seeds on its top.
Soon, the earwig entered the water ...
... and started swimming across the pond. These insects aren't great swimmers, the earwing soon started floating aimlessly, so I put it out of the water, on the dry stretch of vegetation near the pond. Meanwhile ...
... Farabuto was busy exploring the strange, new, swampy landscape he had never seen before. At that point, the sky was blue and clear, it wasn't raining anymore, but ...
... but when the gentle breeze started moving the branches from time to time, a bit of residual rain fell from the wet foliage of the pomegranate tree, creating elusive circles on the water underneath. Catching the droplets, bubbles, and circles with the camera was a nice mini-game to play for a few minutes or so.
Here you can see the droplets falling on and around the green bottle lying in the shallow water. Green glass looks kinda cool in the green environment, definitely less visually intrusive than other types of glass.
The branches reflected in the water also looked like something worth exploring through the lens.
The reflections were shape-shifting and shivering.
Here you can see how dramatically the tiny droplets were able to change the images on the surface of the water. It looked a bit like magic.
You may think that snails had a grand time with all that water around ...
... and some of them probably had, but ...
... but a land snail can also drown if there is too much water and if it is deep enough.
Quite a few snails died that afternoon ...
... before reaching a safe place where they could breathe air while waiting for the soil to absorb the surplus water and turn my yard into a familiar landscape that doesn't resemble a swamp.
These relatively big, well-fed snails, very common in my garden, belong to the Helicidae family.
The scientific name of the species is Cornu aspersum.
You can see two snails in a cool pose in this shot.
I had a lot of fun photographing snails last Tuesday, and I saved quite a few from drowning.
Here you can see some small, gracile herbaceous plants that peek from the water accumulated under the pomegranate tree.
Small snails had better chances of surviving the flood than the big ones. This Theba pisana, which also belongs to the Helicidae family, is clinging to some small plant that wouldn't be able to support the much bigger Cornu aspersum. The snail is waiting for the water to be absorbed by the soil.
In this photograph, another Theba pisana is trying to reach a safe place above the water.
This submerged dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) was photographed under the nearby fig tree.
And that's it.
The following links will take you to the sites with more information about some of the protagonists of today's post. I found some stuff about them there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonchus_oleraceus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veronica_arvensis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erigeron_bonariensis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armadillidium_vulgare
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forficula_auricularia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornu_aspersum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theba_pisana
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taraxacum_officinale
