We are living in a sea of mud. I knew it was coming because of the bitter cold temperatures we’ve had this month.
When the temperature stays right at or below freezing for consecutive days the moisture in the soil freezes. The dirt expands as it freezes. As the temperature begins to rise the “expanded” dirt turns into the muddiest soupiest mess you ever saw.
The ground around our house is plumb spongy. Yesterday I was down in Peachtree and the ground there was the same way—a spongy muddy mess.
Thanks to our tractor the driveway is in pretty good shape. Although it’s muddy it’s nowhere near as bad as it’s been in the past.
During really cold winters the driveway would get so bad the girls and I would sometimes park at Granny and Pap’s and walk the rest of the way. And there was many a morning, or evening, when I was ferrying the girls to and from school that they screamed and hollered the whole way down or up swearing I was going to wreck and kill them 🙂 Lots of mud drama. Going down is always worse than coming up.
When the mud arrives I always feel bad for delivery drivers. A few years back our UPS driver told us not to worry when we apologized for our driveway. He said “Every road in the county’s like this because of the cold weather we had.”
Growing up in Wilson holler made me accustomed to muddy driveways. Pap and Granny’s got muddy too especially in the days when Pap drove an oil truck home every day. My uncle’s driveway is paved now, but in days gone by it got to be as bad as ours does in really cold winters and it’s longer. Papaw Wade lived with my uncle in those days.
Pap used to have a 1973 white Impala. One day we were going up to see Papaw Wade. He hit the driveway with everything that car had. We made it about half way up and turned completely around in the middle of the road. Before I knew what happened we were turned around headed back down the hill. I about cried but Pap just laughed.
The road we live on was gravel until the girls were about five or six years old. When I was a teenager the gravel road would get bad in certain places. I remember one year it was especially muddy just above Clate and Mary’s.
I had a little black Ford Exp and I worked at Catos so I had to dress up nice for work. One day I was coming home and got stuck in the mud right by the old homeplace. I tried to spin myself out a few times, but soon gave up. I didn’t have any other shoes to put on so I finally took off my heels and walked half a mile home in my dress. Granny teased me for a long time about having to walking home in the mud barefooted 🙂
Last night’s video: Hamburger Gravy, Fried Cabbage, Cornbread & Pickled Beet Supper in Appalachia.
Tipper
Subscribe for FREE and get a daily dose of Appalachia in your inbox
Hope mud season is a short one ! ❤️
As a long time waterfowler I learned to respect what I used to call man-eating mud holes. I had them pull my waders off my feet and once got in so deep that if I hadn’t had my shotgun to use as a prop to get out I’d be there yet. There’s something about the wetlands surrounding the Great Salt Lake that’s especially mucky. But of course, that’s where the ducks are!
Tipper, what ever happened to Clate and Mary’s house? Is it still standing, and has anybody lived in it since the lady from Florida stayed in it? It bothers me when old home places are abandoned. Houses are made to be lived in. I think of all the hard work that goes into building a house and all the memories that seem to be gone forever of the people who lived in them. If old walls and floorboards could talk I wonder what they’d say. 🙂
Regina-no one lives in it. I think the same thing about old houses 🙂
I know how it is. It’s so wet around here and won’t dry up till spring or first of summer.
Yep. Our back yard is part ice, party soupy muddy mess. I’ve got a 6 year old boy that doesn’t mind that at all though this is the time of year our sump pump starts running and won’t stop til May.
Our yard is still covered with several inches of snow, but the path my hubby shoveled is down to the ground in some places now, and it’s gonna be a mud path soon. Yesterday the ups driver left lots of muddy footprints on the steps and front porch as he kindly delivered a package to us. It looks like Spring today with all the sunshine.
After all the snow an cold we had here in West Virginia, I still have ice on parts of my driveway that is a a dirt driveway. I always said we go from the Bob sled run to the mud bogs to the dust bowl. (lol)
Been putting up with it all my life. The driveway is a mile l I ng up an down an around, but I don’t guess I’d have it any other way.
Good morning Miss Tipper! We live 15 miles off the paved highway, up dirt roads so I know a thing or two about mud. ; ). It is a losing battle to keep a vehicle clean living on this mountain, lol. Our county is all very rural so most of us haven’t seen our license plates for months, lol. But I love it, only the newly relocated, former city folk, bemoan the lack of pavement.
All this mud talk reminded me of stories my dad told about combat in Italy’s Appenine Mountains and having to battle both the enemy and the mud. The “muddy season” came with spring thaws. Dad said entire columns of vehicles would be stuck on steep mountain roads and lanes, making easy targets for German artillery from higher ground. He said as bad as winter weather was, the mud made their lives almost as miserable. In some mountainous terrain supplies were brought up by pack mules, which carried dead and wounded soldiers down. Pop was with the 361st Infantry Regiment, 91st Division, 5th Army. I was not quite 13 when he came home.
Good morning everyone. We are in the upper delta of Arkansas. Mississippi county. The name should give you an idea of how wet we are. We don’t get mud, we get water. One stream forms on the back of the house and runs along the side for almost the the entire 1 1/4 acres. It’s narrow but ends at the oak tree and forms a little pond. Birds love it. But the ground is deceiving. When you walk in the front area, which is about 1/2 the land, your feet will move slower. When you look down you will see that you are sinking in water. It’s clean so you don’t get grossed out, but it might be a nuisance if you had to walk there. My heart goes out to Granny. I know what she might be feeling, It’s only my brother and me. Me being the older one. Please give her extra hugs. Anna from Arkansas.
We’d say “We’re mud walloped” when the ground got that bad. We still keep a gravel driveway because when we do get slick freezing weather, we can still get out to the main road. Our neighbors with paved driveways nearly slide off the mountain in spite of putting down that chemical de-icing. We have to lay down new gravel every 8 years but it’s not that expensive and we don’t have to do the whole drive because over the years parts of the driveway has hardened into a rough gravel base that’s better than paved.
My car is so muddy I was ashamed to drive it to a doctor’s appointment yesterday. I intended to run through a car wash, but the whole town had the same idea. While I waited in line before I decided to leave, I read the list of rules that included a funny one that said no muddy vehicles allowed. We are supposed to get a ton of rain starting tomorrow night that might help clean my windows enough to see where I’m going.
This happens a lot in Massachusetts too. When I was going to UMass Amherst (undergrad) we started calling it UMess at Mudherst. 🙂
Now with living in what I call the ‘concrete jungle’ we don’t get ‘mud season’ but I remember the days when I lived rural and experienced such times. We often called the mud ‘gumbo’ it was so thick and soupy – walking was a challenge never mind driving in it. If I ever think I miss such times, the close, outlying communities provide the opportunity.
You poor things! That sounds really frustrating!
I don’t recall living anywhere that had a muddy season, but most places I’ve lived were in town. I’ve heard people talk about the muddy season, but just never experienced it myself. You were smart taking off your heels to walk the rest of the way home in your bare feet. Feet are easier to clean up than good shoes. Besides, I’ve heard in them fancy beauty salons they do mud treatments to exfoliate the skin. You just need to tell yourself your feet got an expensive mud treatment for free.
We always said “the ground is rotten” when “the bottom falls out”. Freeze and thaw cycles really make a mess. Loggers are a group that really have lean times then. Frozen is better for hauling. This year is certainly different here. Our whole yard is soft from being frost heaved. Just stepping on it yesterday turned spots into mud. The moles have not helped. I rather suspect a new kind of mud problem is yet another trial for Helene survivors to.
Yikes!!!! We don’t have a mud season for our neck of the woods, but we are having a ice skating time in our driveway. It’s solid ice with a little gravel poking through here and there, so walking it this morning was really dicey. And our driveway to our house goes downhill, so that adds to the “fun”.
It hasn’t been as muddy as it usually is here this time of year. That one little snow is about all the precipitation I’ve had, aside from a sprinkle of rain here and there. I guess it’s holding back, waiting for plowing and planting season.
My driveway doesn’t get muddy because nobody drives on it any more except the mail lady who only comes when I have a package that won’t fit in the mailbox (for some reason my mailbox is on an different road than the one I live on).
Same here! My husband always says “when this stuff melts” there isn’t going to be any ground under it. But the bright side is that melting ice and snow do more to really saturate the ground than any rain, so I’m great for it.
You are right, along with the moisture, it also puts a lot of nitrogen into the ground if the old time farmers were correct.
Oh dear. Hope that spongy sea of mud firms up soon. Take care.
I’ve never heard the term “mud season “ but Mike Caron sure describes it perfectly. Frozen and thawed ground surely makes the worst mud. A friend used to describe it as slicker than snot on a door knob.
I have never had that much problem with muddy drive ways but my yard is soft from the moisture. I have drove on some muddy roads, anyone remember in the past when farmers and other country men would often put “mud grip” tires on the back of their two wheel dive pickup trucks. If the tread on your tires fill up with mud it is the same as having bald tires and spinning them makes it worse. My dirt driveway has gravel on it.When I was a young boy, I made enough enough money for Daddy to take me to a pay catfish lake. While there a car pulled up and a huge lady got out, Daddy took one look and ran to the car and went to hugging and talking to her. She had worked on the same sharecropper farm as my Grandparents and Daddy when he was still a young boy. They were laughing and she asked Daddy “ do you remember me telling you your toes would spread out if you kept walking barefoot in mud puddles /holes and you asking me if I had sit down in one.” Daddy said he did and starting apologizing, she laughed and told him I thought it was just as funny as you did.
I know what you mean about the mud the ground has thawed out, pray for my health I’ve had another spell, I really believe it’s got something to do with medications, God bless Granny Wilson
Norman-I will keep praying for you. I hope you feel better soon.
Here is rural Maine one hear the term “mud season” far more often than the word “spring”. We have lots of dirt roads that become unpassable for some of these very low slung car models designed to be fuel efficient.