Like the 800lb gorilla, anywhere it wants! It has rained all the live long day again today. And a downpour the whole time, no off and on stuff like normal thunderstorms in the states. Even hurricanes gust. Not this: a steady hard rain sound on the roof all day. Puts you right to sleep. Unbelievably, I’m still not sick of it.
I am sick of my front yard being a swamp. Even my side yard, which is slightly higher than my front yard, is mushy. It’s like walking in a bog, so of course, we don’t go out there. Here’s the other thing: the septic is in the front yard. So…. when the front yard is filled with water, well. You get the picture. Oddly, it doesn’t smell at all. But now I know why the landlord told me to keep the dogs out of the front yard in the rainy season!
It wasn’t until this whole bog thing that I realized how oddly my house is built. it’s a cement box filled with dirt and a house sitting on top. In the photo on the right, the brick wall reaches over my head. [I’ll pause here while you all make short people jokes. God, those are funny.]
See where the dark mossy green color starts near the top of the wall? There’s dirt almost up to there. So, was there a mound of ground and they built a fence around that, filled in the edges and put up the house? Or did they build a cement box and fill it with dirt, then put the house on that?
The term "cement box" sticks in your mind because, in the rainy season, this yard is a cement box filled with water. There are drainage ditches, but just not nearly enough. This is a very big box and most of the drains are filled with earth. I’m thinking poor planning but I’m no engineer. [Photo left: One of the non-working drainage holes. Photo right: a line of them… the very last one is the only working one.]
Only one drain takes the water out of the yard and it’s working overtime. Here’s a fascinating little video of the water coming out of the hole. Trust me, this is on a day it has yet to rain! This one exit is just not enough. I keep picturing the wall coming down, bricks popping out, the house sliding into the street. It’s been known to happen.
From the back yard to the front, there are strategically placed cement gutters, directing water here and there. The back yard ones lead under the house, downhill to the front yard gutters. The whole thing is pretty elaborate but it wasn’t until I experienced this amount of water and saw it rushing around and under my house that I put two and two together. The water flowing downhill here can ruin you if you don’t pay attention.
Until Wilma, floods used to be pictures on the news. You just never think of water as a destructive force. Not rainwater anyway. But this rainwater brings down the sides of mountains. Pushes houses in to rivers. Floods houses poorly built along the road with no gutters.
Last year was relatively dry and I was disappointed we didn’t get a really good authentic rainy season. We are getting one now. Hope it doesn’t wash us away!