The Great Outdoors!
No tornadoes today. Yet. We've got a tornado watch for a while and it's been raining and thundering for a while now.
I made my weekly pilgrimage to Lowe's today. Twice. I had debated this morning buying a thatcher to pull behind my mower. I decided against it. After I got home I decided to get it, so went back in to town. Just in time for it to rain HARD.
While I was out shopping this morning, I hit the farmer's market and bought an eggplant, red peppers and greens. I'm going to have greens and cornbread tomorrow night for dinner. The guy who sold me the peppers is from Gary, Indiana, of all places.
The Home Corps of Engineers
It was still raining pretty good when I got home. I went inside and put on my Wellies and raincoat. I wanted to check out my yard during a good rain to identify any drainage issues and see where/how the water flows throughout the property. What I observed is that the side yard on the north wasn't graded properly. There's a low spot right next to the driveway, then it slopes up to the ditch and up to the backyard. I haven't decided which direction it would be better to have the water flow (front or back), but I'm leaning toward front, rather than directing the water to run under the main gate in the fence.
A river runs through the dog run too. If I end up getting a dog, I'll have to move the dog house to a different spot and do something about the water. If nothing else, put rock down along the west end of the dog run to prevent erosion and a giant mud puddle.
Most of the water running through the yard is on the north side of the pool, under the big poison ivy covered trees (sweet gum trees). The water then flows west toward the back of the garden (but not into the garden) before flowing onto the farm property. The amount of water flowing off the farm's parking area explains the amount of gravel on the north side of these trees. I think it would be really tricky to till up all the grass and just put in ground cover. I think it definitely needs to be at least part grass. I have also figured out why the fescue planted here does so well in the hot summers--it gets watered heavily by the runoff every time it rains! I'll go overseed it this week and keep up the watering to get it established.
The ditch along the street runs down the border between my yard and the neighbor's yard to the south. This is well-grown with grass and doesn't show any erosion problems. The one problem it does cause is that the end of the ditch flattens out in my yard, causing the water to run toward my yard barn before flowing around the oak tree and into the farm. It would be fairly straightforward to modify/revise the flat spot in the ditch to give the water more "direction" in its path. Just dig out a bit of a shallow ditch and use the soil and grass that's dug up to build up the north side a bit to prevent pooling by the shed. Once I dig it up, I'll have to mulch it pretty heavily and either seed it or put down a couple pieces of sod to keep it from getting washed out.
As long as I was outside in the rain, I cleaned the gutter over the driveway since it wasn't draining at all. There were leaves plugging the top of the downspout. It took 20 seconds to fix and 15 seconds of that was having to move the ladder to the right spot. I also switched the drainpipes on two other downspouts. One of them was the normal short elbow and ran out onto a plastic drain shield. The only problem was that the shield was in a low spot and only served to fill up the low spot against the house. Another downspout had a long plastic hose-type thing attached, so I switched the two of them. In the rain. But it needed to be done and it works now, so I really don't care. I'm pretty certain the neighbors all think I'm crazy by now anyway.
I also finished my "ditch" to drain the front sidewalk in a rainstorm. To the left is the "before" picture. The rain last night and today really softened up the soil so the digging was easy. The water pooling on the sidewalk disappeared rather quickly. 
I'll have to make sure I build the flowerbed so that the drainage from the driveway and sidewalk isn't going to cause problems for the plants. Maybe I'll finish digging up the grass tomorrow. I have several holes in the back yard where I can put the grass and dirt.
Now I'm fixing to unpack a couple of boxes and get the kitchen cleaned. I was a bit of a slacker on keeping up with the dishes this week. Need to finish up the laundry too.
I made my weekly pilgrimage to Lowe's today. Twice. I had debated this morning buying a thatcher to pull behind my mower. I decided against it. After I got home I decided to get it, so went back in to town. Just in time for it to rain HARD.
While I was out shopping this morning, I hit the farmer's market and bought an eggplant, red peppers and greens. I'm going to have greens and cornbread tomorrow night for dinner. The guy who sold me the peppers is from Gary, Indiana, of all places.
The Home Corps of Engineers
It was still raining pretty good when I got home. I went inside and put on my Wellies and raincoat. I wanted to check out my yard during a good rain to identify any drainage issues and see where/how the water flows throughout the property. What I observed is that the side yard on the north wasn't graded properly. There's a low spot right next to the driveway, then it slopes up to the ditch and up to the backyard. I haven't decided which direction it would be better to have the water flow (front or back), but I'm leaning toward front, rather than directing the water to run under the main gate in the fence.It would seem that a good bit of the rainfall in the neighborhood flows through my yard. The equipment parking area to the north of my property slopes to my yard and I had observed evidence of lots of water flow in that area before. Here's what it looks like when it's running. That's a hole in the fence and it was running full of water when I walked up. As I looked, it slowed down a bit. The slope on my side of the fence isn't washed out at all. I guess the grass is doing a darned good job holding things in place.
A river runs through the dog run too. If I end up getting a dog, I'll have to move the dog house to a different spot and do something about the water. If nothing else, put rock down along the west end of the dog run to prevent erosion and a giant mud puddle.
Most of the water running through the yard is on the north side of the pool, under the big poison ivy covered trees (sweet gum trees). The water then flows west toward the back of the garden (but not into the garden) before flowing onto the farm property. The amount of water flowing off the farm's parking area explains the amount of gravel on the north side of these trees. I think it would be really tricky to till up all the grass and just put in ground cover. I think it definitely needs to be at least part grass. I have also figured out why the fescue planted here does so well in the hot summers--it gets watered heavily by the runoff every time it rains! I'll go overseed it this week and keep up the watering to get it established.
The ditch along the street runs down the border between my yard and the neighbor's yard to the south. This is well-grown with grass and doesn't show any erosion problems. The one problem it does cause is that the end of the ditch flattens out in my yard, causing the water to run toward my yard barn before flowing around the oak tree and into the farm. It would be fairly straightforward to modify/revise the flat spot in the ditch to give the water more "direction" in its path. Just dig out a bit of a shallow ditch and use the soil and grass that's dug up to build up the north side a bit to prevent pooling by the shed. Once I dig it up, I'll have to mulch it pretty heavily and either seed it or put down a couple pieces of sod to keep it from getting washed out.As long as I was outside in the rain, I cleaned the gutter over the driveway since it wasn't draining at all. There were leaves plugging the top of the downspout. It took 20 seconds to fix and 15 seconds of that was having to move the ladder to the right spot. I also switched the drainpipes on two other downspouts. One of them was the normal short elbow and ran out onto a plastic drain shield. The only problem was that the shield was in a low spot and only served to fill up the low spot against the house. Another downspout had a long plastic hose-type thing attached, so I switched the two of them. In the rain. But it needed to be done and it works now, so I really don't care. I'm pretty certain the neighbors all think I'm crazy by now anyway.
I also finished my "ditch" to drain the front sidewalk in a rainstorm. To the left is the "before" picture. The rain last night and today really softened up the soil so the digging was easy. The water pooling on the sidewalk disappeared rather quickly. 
I'll have to make sure I build the flowerbed so that the drainage from the driveway and sidewalk isn't going to cause problems for the plants. Maybe I'll finish digging up the grass tomorrow. I have several holes in the back yard where I can put the grass and dirt.Now I'm fixing to unpack a couple of boxes and get the kitchen cleaned. I was a bit of a slacker on keeping up with the dishes this week. Need to finish up the laundry too.
Comments
Way to go!