Washed Out

Though we're not in a flood plain, our backyard tends to fill up and become a mucky mess in the spring.  This spring is worse than others -- we had above average snowfall this winter that melted within the last 2 or 3 weeks and we've just had two very major rainstorms that flooded many of the rivers around here.  With the weather so beautiful today, we wished we could spend some time in the backyard, but about half of it was too sodden to walk on.  So I started investigating.

We have a man-made gully that runs through our backyard to help drain the water that comes off the mountain behind us.  And in the springtime, it runs like a river.  It starts several houses uphill from us and runs through the yards of several more houses downhil from us before it empties out somewhere.... But much of the water is not making it into the gully and instead is spreading through the left side of the yard -- then flowing into the gully by way of a depression that runs from the edge of the house back towards the gully --  and the back end of the yard -- where the water just sits, with nowhere to go.  Since the water is coming from uphill, I gingerly made my way towards my uphill neighbor's fence and peered over. 

Lo and behold, his yard was flooding too and the water was rushing not through the gully, but down towards his raised cement deck, then along its base and straight for our yard.  I traced the flow of water backwards and found its source at the far fence, just below the "mouth" of the gully in his yard.  Somehow, the water is missing the gully and finding other ways to drain.  I called Miguel over and showed him my findings.  "I'll talk to Pete about it tomorrow.  I'll tell him that I'm perfectly willing to do the work to fix it because it'll help our yard as well as his."

Then I worked my way to the farthest corner of our yard, up a small incline, behind the cement slab that once was the floor of a dog kennel and now supports our pergola, past the terraced garden we created almost three years ago.  I looked carefully through the dried marsh grasses, compacted leaves and fallen tree limbs.  And there I saw it, another small river cascading down from the mountain, undirected and straight into our yard.  Once it hit our little part of the hill, it spread across our gardent plot, then down and out, encompassing nearly the entire back end of the yard.  Once again, I called Miguel over to assess the situation.  "Maybe we can get Pete to create some kind of a trench to direct the water into the gully," I said dubiously.  Pete is not known for his love of yardwork.  And the area in question is a tangle of tree roots and marsh grasses and other woodland debris. 

We studied the flow some more in silence.  Then I turned and surveyed the yard again.  "What if we stop it here, by digging a trench along the edge of the garden and down to the gully.  I mean, look," I said pointing, "it's already flowing down past the back edge of the cement slab somewhat.  If we can catch all of it and redirect it that way before it has a chance to spread out, we can solve the problem ourselves."

Without a word, Miguel headed for the shovel and began digging a narrow but deep trench at the edge of the garden.  He worked his way backwards from the front edge of the garden to the rear fence-line, digging through the sucking mud and trying not to fall into it.  The trench immediately filled with water, which began flowing out the corner of the garden and down the rocky hill towards the edge of the cement slab.  I grabbed a hoe and began defining more clearly the path the water should take in its trek to the gully.  We repositioned a few large rocks to ease the flow and before long, the garden area itself began to look less wet.  The slab, whose front end had been consistently we for the last few days, began drying and over the next few hours we saw definite improvement. 

It remains to be seen, on the morrow, if our handiwork has succeeded.  At its best, it will have redirected all of that water and given our yard a chance to soak up all of the remaining water and perhaps even firm up a bit.  If it has, then we just need to make the trench a bit more permanent, so that in future years, we have nothing to worry about.