Water in the Meadow!

We typically have water running through our meadow during heavy or long rains. That is not bad. We have done some trenching and it drains off fairly fast and runs along the side of the driveway. Until these latest storms!

During a normal rain the water is about 4 feet or so wide. The second storm it was about 6 feet wide. The third storm I have these pictures from. It is difficult to see how wide the swath of water is, but think on terms of about 15 to 20 feet. The first two pictures are from our RV window.

If you look closely, you will see water clear over in front of the bird cage. There is NEVER typically water running there even during a heavy rain.

I tried to get a picture of the creek from the RV, but the brush is too thick to see it. The creek bank goes down quite a bit, yet I could see the top of the water rushing through the creek. It has to be almost over its banks for me to see that.

This is a picture of the flattened grass, which was standing about 3 feet or so high. I am halfway across our meadow and facing the neighbors property and home. Part of the water you see is runoff from his hillside.


Here, I am looking back toward our driveway and our other neighbor, whose home you cannot see.

Channeling the Creek!

Dave dug out the creek area some more. This has allowed the water level to go down even further so that he can roll the culvert pipe into it.


You can see how low the water level has gotten.



This is looking down next to the pallet we use to cross over the channel.




This is where the two channels come together. All the water is flowing on one side. There is very little water left on the other side. It is just standing water...not flowing water.

The Joys of Trenching & Inertia!

I am not what you would call a "fit" woman. I am so out of shape. *sigh* Now, you would think that I would take advantage of living on a hillside out in the country to go for walks, right? Wrong!

I seem to so easily succumb to the inertia that comes with living in a space that is so small that there is really no place to move around. I am used to being up and around, walking from room to room or, as in the case of the house we used to "rent" from the bank, up and down the stairs. I really miss that. I miss being in motion. There really is no way to be in motion like that in the RV unless I do an actual workout, which is a bit tricky! So, I end up sitting an awful lot and inertia sets in. Yet, when I do go out to do something like trenching, I just keep going and going and going. I amaze myself with how much I actually get done.

We have water that drains down the hillside from the neighbors property and from ours. It pools at the far end of our meadow, creating a little "creek" running down the middle of our meadow and causing pooling right over our leach lines. Not good! So, Dave had started a trench from where the water joins at the far end of our meadow toward the creek in an attempt to divert it.

I have worked on extending the trench when I can. Yesterday afternoon, I worked hard and got it all the way to the crest above the creek bank. However, it was not deep enough for the water to flow all the way to the crest and down the bank into the creek.

Today, I dug it deeper and got the water much farther along, but got stopped just a few feet short by a very big rock. Dave had been working on the creek crossing and on the drainage of the pool over the leach lines. Then he went and got out that huge rock. He deepened the trench and the water started flowing into the creek. Woohoo! Boy, does that feel good. We will have to keep working on it to keep it clear and deep.

At the beginning of the trench, where the water pools together, I dug on one side and made a dirt "dam" on the other side to try to prevent any more water from going into our meadow. Dave built it up a little bit more. Between the dam and the trench on one end of the meadow and the trenching Dave did at the other end, I have never seen the meadow with this small of an amount of water. Of course, the real test will be when a big rain hits; but any way you look at it, it has to be better than it was.

I did take some pictures of the trenching and will get them up when I can.

The Four Seasons

I love the four seasons. I had missed them terribly after living for almost 40 years in a place where we had only two seasons...mild/dry and cold/wet. In the time we have been here I have been able to see the Autumn leaves of color, the frost covered trees, the brief (too brief in my mind) white of snow and felt the warmth of summer sun. I have actually seen the sun most days instead of gray cloud cover...most of the year! Yay!!!!

I do miss the people I left behind, though. I also miss having more good weather for motorcycle riding...although, I guess that does not matter much since my motorcycle quit running. :P

We have a partially finished laundry room. It is one and half stories high. The roof is mostly on, but there is a strip that has no plywood on it. To finish that off will require the building of scaffolding on a muddy slanted area. It is going to be a bit tricky. In the meantime, we have the whole laundry room roof covered with a tarp. There is some black plastic over the opening strip, however, the rain has a tendency to push it through dropping water all over the floor, which then has a tendency to leak into the bottom. I will write more about how we do laundry later...perhaps on our next wash day. :)