A Long Soggy Winter

There has been very little opportunity to garden these past few months. In fact, we've been so consistently wet that the ponds still haven't been completely cleaned out from the falling leaves. Even if walking on wet ground wasn't a big no no, I would still refuse to garden with umbrella in hand. Call me a fair weather gardener.

The moisture deficit in our area is a thing of the past. I was curious to see what would happen when the ground became saturated and our berms held all moisture that fell to our property. The answer is that we have a couple leaks in the basement. One two day period in November produced 4 1/2" of rain. This is when I discovered not only the existing leak that has always been there by the chimney but also a new leak coming in from where we added the basement door. I think this one may be related to the fact that the water has no where to go except downhill and that means down our basement steps and into the well under the bottom step that houses a sump pump. Perhaps this spring we'll add some overflow channels that can be opened should we ever need to actually let rainwater leave the property.

The gentle little Ellerbe Creek across the street is now a raging river. The stream restoration work done by the EEP last spring has held up well through the heavy downpours. I wonder though, how many events like this one it will take before the fast moving water begins cutting deeper channels. I was thinking that if we could get just 10% of all our neighbors to put in those raingardens, the creek wouldn't be forced to carry so much run-off.