Monday, January 25, 2010

Moving mountains?

No, but we moved a stream.

We love our stream. Imagine listening to the sound of wind in the trees and trickling water. It's blissful. And then there's today.

The winds are over 50 mph and inches of rain are falling. We live on a mountain, and water runs downhill...... We have a series of culverts above our house to divert water into our much-beloved stream. Sometimes the culverts are blocked or simply overloaded and the water meant for the stream comes down toward the house. That happened today.

My son's car had a foot of water under it, so we were shocked when that wouldn't start. The driveway flooded to the point that water was streaming in under the garage door. Since my driveway runs downhill from the garage doors, it takes a whole lot of water to back up into my garage. Like, in eight years, it's never happened. I guess there's a first time for everything.

Once the water hit the garage, I sent out an SOS and my hubby came home. We got all dressed up and headed outside. I dug a trench away from the house and hubby climbed to mountain to start clearing the culverts. It was a precious, precious moment when the culvert cleared and the water stopped pouring into my garage. I think I cried. Hard to tell since I was very, very wet already.

If you've never done this type of work, it's hard. And wet. And very very slippery. We both fell several times. I got hit on the head by a flying tree branch, but it wasn't too serious. This all will be funny in a week or two, but today? Notsomuch.

There are days I love my house and I hope to have one of those days really, really soon.

Here's my hubby, getting ready to attack another pile of debris so all the water out of the stream can flow freely in to the stream:



And here am I, on the way back into the house. If I show a picture of hubby soaking wet, I have to show one of me, as well:



We have at least another 36 hours before the water subsides. I need to rest up in case we have to go out and do this again. Wouldn't that be fun?

Time for a chai tea latte and some mindless quilting.

2 comments:

Darx said...

Wow, what a day! I hope that y'all are soon recovered. Your yard is gorgeous, though! Remind me to invite myself over for a visit one of these days :)

The Calico Cat said...

I am so glad that "our" steam is at least 10 feet below our unit.