Thursday, 1 December 2022
On my rainy garden walkabout yesterday, I decided I must do the deep path extension. I’d been thinking about it for so long. I didn’t think it would be today because we had some snow. I slept so late that I missed it, and Allan just saw the end of it.
However, after breakfast, the weather looked possible for a project despite being 38 degrees F. I knew the project would be aerobic and would keep me warm.
I have another winter of beautiful skies to the south, and being able to see the weather flag over Alicia’s lawn, without a tall building blocking the views of this entire block. I will appreciate it.
In my garden, the snow was almost gone.
My Corylopsis pauciflora seem to display raindrops better than any other shrub.
In the Bogsy Wood, I started to dig the channel to connect the metal path and the deep path. I had envisioned a narrow channel, perhaps bridgeable by three long cement pavers. The digging was easier than I thought; fortunately, Allan had agreed to make whatever size bridge was required.
Even though I kept the ends dammed up, water rose from the ground as I dug.
It was a thrilling moment when I broke through the ends and the water rushed and out from the metal path. I had feared one area would drain away but instead it all leveled out. Perfect.
I had used the soil and sand to extend a bed by the bridge after removing a strip of sod and to fill low spots in the former salmonberry tunnel. When I was done with all my digging, Allan brought a wheelbarrow of mulch and had a look at the project.
He likes it. I am well chuffed.. We set up some cones to remind ourselves or unexpected visitors not to fall in. Now it’s over to him to build a bridge sometime this winter. When the water recedes, I’ll add some rocks and shape up the edges.
This is my favorite new view, looking southeast over the deep path.
A Christmas package had arrived from Montana Mary with instructions to open one gift today. It immediately was clear why I should open it today: an advent calendar with shortbread for every day!
Tangly Cottage Gardening 
You are quite the water engineer! Bravo Montana Mary, well done!
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So glad you’re enjoying that calendar!
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Your deep path water trench project is something I wish could have worked for us, instead of our underground trench drains connecting to the street drainage system. They have now all failed with silt and tree roots. Ah well, we have a backyard lake for four months of the year – enough water to bring in the ducks!
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We’ve had to do extensive drainage work too, way beyond pick and shovel and (bad) backs. A few weeks ago we had a bulldozer and two men with trucks of gravel mucking up the back yard, we raked and seeded it with exactly the right amount of time before the rains, after a week of twice-daily watering. I wish all of my timing were that good! We live in Thurston county where everyone’s drainage depends on driveway culverts being somewhat leaf free. The memory of two January floods almost three years ago is very fresh and we hope to have a dry basement this winter.
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I hear you on the flooding. We had to have the outside walls of our house excavated for perimeter drainage soon after we moved in when we flooded inside. As older houses here get torn down for new homes, their lots get built up which causes runoff into the yards of adjoining older properties. They are supposed to mitigate that with property line drainage, but it never works properly. We have a fifty year old house, and the homes to two sides of us are recently sold and will be torn down. I guess we will have lots of ducks.
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That sounds like a lot of building noise in your future, something I dread here.
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You do look amazingly wet. Your scientific rain gauge is most impressive.
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