Anxiety

If I was "frustrated" in my last post, (June 4th) then anxiety is the current emotion. There's been several issues to deal with during the last month, and just when we think we're making progress we take steps backward...

After sweltering weekends building retaining walls at the end of our driveway and working to fill in some low spots on our hills with top soil, grass seed, ground cover plants, and straw or erosion blankets... we had a nasty rain storm.  It rained, and rained, and rained.  It wasn't a nice soaking rain, but a nasty hard rain. By the morning we had washouts that were the worst they've ever been.  After shedding a few tears over all the work we'd done for nothing, we contacted our builder - who came out with an excavator.

The good news was that they could fix it, the bad news was that there were several other new homes with issues worse than ours from the rain... so we wouldn't be on the top of the priority list.

We waited.  We waited for three weeks and tried to protect our driveway by lining some of the worst areas with bales of straw.  The straw would act as a barrier to any future rain in hopes of saving our newly paved driveway!  Luckily in those three weeks we had hardly any rain.

The excavator was out today and added a drain to the worst washout area - this will allow the water to be directed to where we want it, and not down the side of the hill. The other washout areas now have "French drains", which is a trench with perforated pipe covered with gravel.  We also had top soil spread in preparation for grass, and to make an even transition from the pavement of the driveway to the yard.

It sure felt good to come home tonight and see we are are making steps forward! Have I told you how much I love owning an acre of sand?!?!

Getting ready to start the retaining walls

Hubby lugging 85 pound blocks

Finishing up the walls with cap stones

Plants for the retaining walls and the large hill... the ones planted
on the large hill will be a waste of money and our time planting, they
will end up buried in sand after the washout

Finished!

Adding erosion blankets to the large hill

Erosion blankets down

Small washout area

At least it didn't take the wall

Bye Bye erosion blankets, grass seed, mulch, ground cover plants...
can we keep the new blacktop?

While it might not look like it, if Hubby stood in the middle of this washout
it is taller than him, and he's 6'1"

French drain near the retaining wall

Another French drain

Drain added at top of driveway

The hill filled back in... time to replant and mulch

No more gully

All the bales we used... guess it will go down over the grass seed now