Ditch Digging 101

Building a house is a never-ending process. We made it livable, but there are still many picky little things to be done. For instance, the guest room has no baseboards. One piece of trim is missing from the dining room. These are things you stop noticing after awhile. Then very occasionally you look up and say, "Oh . . . right."

We have several "to-do" lists. I have a catch-all list with about 60 items on it. The Mountain Man has two: an inside list and an outside list. Each list has approximately 75 things on it. And only one item is on both his and my lists (tiling the wall over the stove). Although we are learning to be more specific so we can cross things off more quickly. For instance, instead of "stain decks" we put "stain front deck, stain back porch, stain upstairs deck." So while it adds items, it is much more encouraging, since some of these projects are more than you can do in a couple of hours, which is usually what we have available.

Anyway, we were inspired for one project by the fact that the Mountain Man's foundation guy was finally available to grade and put new gravel on our 1/4 mile long rut waterfall drain driveway. The Mountain Man asked him to bring extra gravel so we could put in some drains. $700 later (that's just the gravel, we don't know what we're looking at in labor. It took him a day and half - it was that bad), we still are looking at picking up another load of gravel in the truck. But at least we only have one trip to town for gravel as opposed to the six we would have had otherwise.

The project requiring all this gravel was digging a ditch behind the house so we can build a path to the "park" (backyard where the swingset is), rather than traipsing through the mud like we've been doing for the last several years. The ditch was required so we could put in drains so that when we do build the path, it won't end up being an elaborate and expensive mud path. Because what we have now is just a cheap accidental mud path requiring no effort on our part.

So Saturday morning bright and early (think 6:30) the Mountain Man started digging. And digging. And digging. He used a mattock to break up the dirt and rock - lots and lots of rock - that had been packed down over the last 8 years while we were building and living in the house. What he thought needed to be a 20-foot ditch turned out to be more like 35 feet. (That's why we ran out of gravel and pipe.)

The kids and I went out to help after they woke up. For August it was amazingly cool - in the 60s. At first the kids were content to sit in the chair and watch Daddy dig, but that got old pretty quickly. The Queen was all excited about dumping in gravel, but Daddy wasn't quite ready for gravel yet, so we spent some time collecting some gravel in odd leftover plant containers. She even used her purple plastic shovel to get some loose dirt out of the ditch. DeBoy was more interested in digging in the dirt. My sister-in-law had sent us home with some kid-size gardening implements and gloves, and the kids were all about using those, even though DeBoy's hands were so small his fingers didn't go into the glove fingers. But they collected the gravel in their buckets and they were very proud.

We discovered several earthworms that I picked up for them to touch (they didn't want to after the first one, and the Queen poked one with a shovel trying to get it to move, but I expect she poked a bit too hard, because when I moved it, it made no effort to go anywhere. We told her it was sleeping.). So several earthworms were introduced into the involuntary relocation program, although where they went has much better soil than where they were, so they should be grateful (unlike most such programs).

I snagged some of the bigger rocks the Mountain Man was digging up and started relining one of our paths through the garden, clearing away weeds and such in the meantime. I also planted some perennials that had been languishing away for a month in their pots. They seem to have survived the neglect. I like those kinds of plants.

On Sunday, we loaded up and went to town for the last piece of pipe, then the Mountain Man used up the last of the gravel, and we checked for drainage again. You'd be amazed how exciting drainage is when all the water is running the way it is supposed to. I guess you had to be there.

It started raining as he was moving some of the leftover dirt to build a ramp to the shed. We stayed out and played in the rain until the thunder started. Suldog should be proud of us.

The Mountain Man is planning to get the last load of gravel this week and we'll finish the drain part this weekend. Hopefully we'll also be able to build the flower bed, and maybe even start on the actual path. Rest assured that we will post pictures, whether you're interested or not.

Hey Daddy, I'm sitting in the chair like I'm supposed to!
The Mountain man digging.The first drainage test. (And the end of the first outfit of the day.)The first layer (French drain) with gravel on top. The second solid drain on top of the French drain.
The gutter connects to the joint, the joint connects to the solid drain, the solid drain travels the ditch line . . . and it works. How do we know? Because you haul the hose up the ladder and pour water down the gutter.I seriously contemplated just throwing the pants away, but since they're designated for this sort of work anyway, they didn't have to come out completely clean. And all the mud-covered shoes and the rest of our mud-covered clothes had to be washed as well, so we did it. I even got the mud out of the pink dress. (Proud of me, JJ?)
to be continued . . .