Even More Water

As forecasted, Oakland received just over two inches of rain during the night. Did our newly dug trench survive the night, did it move the excess water away from the boggy top of the yard? Yes! And it still is!


Looking just at the sky, one would think that the rain has stopped already but our property doesn't seem to understand that. There is so much runoff from the hill behind us that we have a proper creek of water running down our trenches. And it's so sweet! I was a bit mesmerized looking at the tiny babbling brook this morning, watching the light bounce off it as it swirled about to the end of the system where it then made it's own eddy across the flat mud where our patio used to be and curled toward the back gate at the side of the house, like it actually wanted to join the french drain buried just below.

So these pictures show the rest of the system that I was too tired or lazy or muddy to take pictures of when we finished it on Sunday. After the trench drops down to the lower level of the yard, it goes down a bit and then we decided for a bit of whimsy, it splits in two and we have a little island. We will probably make a cute little bridge to go over it or maybe two. We will need to work a little bit on the leveling though so that the water flows more easily into the inner branch, right now the only water in there is the back up from the end of the trench. Also, can you see the silt (or debris left in the trench from our digging) that has traveled all the way down the yard to try and clog the lower branch.



In the second picture, you can see the water edging ever higher in the trench till it overflows at the end flooding this new area of the yard! But this is what we were aiming for. Even without the rest of the trench dug out the water is continuing to flow down and is leaving the yard in the french drain put in by our contractor.