continued drainage ditch around house

continued from yesterday, the ditch is dug now all around the end of the house and it winds around to the backside of the house until it hits the back porch

My Cheyenne thought she needed to run through the ditch

goofy kid!

You can see it goes from the road all up the yard and then around the end of the house

I don't know why I didn't get photos of the huge hole on the end of the house, probably because I was working when they dug it and I forgot!

Digging up around house for drainage

Remember my post from May 6th, talking about the end of the house that gets all the hill runoff, it soggies up the yard and ends up in our basement May 6 post 
and this post showing the mess

Well it's time we did something about that, not my favorite thing in the world, tearing up a beautiful yard after it's taken so long to get everything looking pretty out there, but sometimes we have to do it

 hubby on the measuring stick (for depth of ditch) and brother in law on the backhoe of the neighbors we borrowed to do this ditch project

it's getting there!, what a mess, all that dirt all over the yard now :(

 had to get the box turtles out of their enclosure because it is now all dug up, they will have to all live in crates for a day or two until I determine where I want to make their new homes

see the snail along for the ride, someone must have found the toad and put in there with them, goofy things, hitchin a ride

pretty babies, don't know what to do stuck in a crate

 checking depth

 ran some water to see if the runoff has the right slope so it doesn't back up but flows out into the ditch

 that's a deep and long trench!

 and that used to be my beautiful front yard boo waahh

 at least they moved my shrub

adjusting the slope a bit

Drainage around house, cobblestone sidewalk

 Remember my sidewalk I built because I didn't like the mud it drug into the house, I wanted to take it all around this end of the house and meet up in front to the front porch?

 well I stopped because winter was on it's way, then we found out we needed drainage ditch around the house so never did anymore, figuring to hold off and finish it after the ditch was put in

it has worked great, that little sidewalk  and the hosta in my planting boxes are growing really nice

well you see that lovely hill behind our house, it really does allow a ton of water to run off, right down into where we park as well as around the house itself, and we have been getting water in the basement

you know what that means, drainage ditch around the house is top priority now, you can see I have prepared and removed all the plants that I had on this end of the house, they are now snuggled up in that new front flowerbed I just created

the poppy is from the lady Laner up the road, she was moving and said I could dig starts all I wanted, she didn't think they could be transplanted, well I dug some, and lookie there, they were happy enough to grow and bloom for me :)

just a pretty little egg basket I planted, such pretty bright colors with the pansies, lobelia, dusty miller and the clematis is growing into it now too

Raised bed under sweetgum tree & firepit

Today I am going to show you some photos taken during the raised bed project

first we had to remove the fire pit so the skid loader could get in there

 firepit rocks cleaned up and stacked elsewhere so we can get more dirt into that raised bed we made under the sweetgum tree

 you can see the bean tree is all down and the logs stacked

 lots of dirt from the farmer to fill in this area

 everything piled up during the process, that's the part I hate, the mess

 Dakota getting me some more dirt

 good job Dakota!

 he is becoming a master at that skid loader

 dad supervising

 about one more load 

 while they are bringing the dirt, I am raking it down

 there it is, all filled in, firepit put back in place and cleaned up finally, we even moved the woodpile!!

 with the railroad ties there, it's extra seating for around the firepit too

that old bed spring has my cukes growing up it

Messy March - new job

Messy March because the snow is has melted, however the water is still running down the hillside and laying/pooling in areas of our side yard, making it near impossible to get out there and do anything without sinking :0(

 the yard is sopping wet and covered with the pods from the Sweetgum tree, why don't these drop in the fall when everything else drops?

put some stakes in the ground where the drainage ditch needs to go down center of side yard

Hopefully we can get this remedied before long

March is one of those months that I dislike, and this is why, nothing has yet budded up on trees or posies, we have all the runoff from the hillside, things are just ugly and messy out!

I got me a job woot woot, more money needed to fix up this place