When my two boys were young and talking about what they
would do for work when they grew up, I told them I didn’t care if they were ditch diggers as long
as they were the best ditch diggers.
Well it seems it’s me who is now a ditch digger and I’m doing
the best I can…considering. (My boys by the way turned out to be excellent
mechanics) It seems the back garden area, and probably the entire back lawn is
filled with rubble and construction debris under the soil. After digging down
about 6 inches I am encountering a lot of rocks (mostly what I call rotten
sandstone) and chunks of concrete.
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| You can see that chunk of concrete and the small rocks next to it. |
I’m digging this ditch so I can line one face of it
with metal flashing to keep the roots of mint, ivy, lily of the valley and
raspberry canes in the garden next door out of my garden. And so I dig. I don’t
have far to go from here to there, but I need to go down at least 8”, leaving
2” at the top above ground. It may take me a while, but I’ll get there!
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| Almost done in length, but it's the depth that's tough. |
Then there is another problem that has to be fixed. Last
spring the drainage system for the back of my building had to be flushed. I was having a problem with water percolating up out of
the ground around the sleeve of my downspout. In the winter I would have a
geyser of ice coming out of the sleeve. This past winter I believe it was
responsible for the concrete pad for my a/c compressor to crack
corner-to-corner and the compressor to tilt in the direction of the downspout.
When the pipes were flushed, the workers told me that from my drain to the
storm drain there was one section of pipe that had a bend in it. My request to have the pipe fixed was turned
down.
Now the new compressor is installed and I can see that the
soil is unstable. Something has to be done, because I am not the one who is
going to pay to have my compressor re-leveled every spring! Fix the pipe (which
means digging up the lawn) or baffle the area around the pipe so that
percolating water and ice cannot affect the soil. There is a hole in the ground
around the sleeve, caused by the upsurge of water and ice, as you can see in
this photo.
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| There's the hole around the drain sleeve. |
On a happier note, the new garden on the other side of the
walk is doing quite well. I’ve planted coleus where the ornamental peppers were
before the landscapers chopped them off. Also I have planted some new mums. They were part of the mums I have in the front and came apart when I
moved them. Let’s see if they take. The sedum is looking good and the hosta is
really outdoing itself. I thinned them out this spring and it seems the more
room I give them the bigger they grow.
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| Coming along. |
There’s more to come from Gramma the Ditch Digger, so stay
tuned.
