After last year's drought, I can't really complain about the wet spring and summer we've been having. But it was a little disconcerting to return from a week's vacation out East to discover 7.1" (18.034 cm) of rain in our gauge. In fact, 3 inches (7.62 cm) of rain fell in only two hours on the morning of the day we arrived home. (The narrow tube measures one inch and then the water overflows into the big tube).
The good news was that Mark's rainwater diversion landscaping project meant our basement seemed to get no more water than what we have to deal with during typical heavy storm systems. The garage, however, showed the effects of the weather with a patch of standing water. We haven't had water in the garage (which is built into a slope and is mostly underground) for probably 14 years. Not since Mark re-lanscaped the area along the back wall of the house. That wall runs down to become the back wall of the garage beneath it.
The big issue is that every path in the garden that is on a slope washed out: gravel, mulch, or pine needles. Flat paths did not suffer except for mulch washing into them from adjacent beds. Our gardening neighbor took one look at this mess where two paths meet and declared, "Oooh, your colors ran"! Mark has spent a chunk of the last couple of days digging up the gray gravel and sifting it to remove the smaller orange bits. The orange gravel that falls through the sieve — along with tiny gray bits — goes back on the orange path.
You can see how the orange gravel washed out right down to the barrier cloth. Two gutters spew onto the top part of this path which usually causes some minor slipping and sliding that is quick and easy to clean up. After he finished separating the two gravels, Mark spent some time trying to redirect the gutter flow toward a big garden bed that can take a beating. We won't know if his efforts will pay off unless we get another similar rainfall; something we'd just as soon not happen!
