The street I live on is a hill. My neighborhood/surrounding area is quite hilly.
When it rains a bit, as in all day, a river forms. This river goes down the street, floods the front yards of the people in ‘the valley’, then continues to an intersection about 5 blocks from where I live.
The ‘river’ cut a gulley is various sections of the road and every few years the road has to be fixed.
Enter the neighbor. The neighbor is odd. He went on a planting frenzy. Trees, flowers, shrubs, and weeds abound.
The guy doesnt take care of his yard, the trees and bushes are growing like crazy, well some of them anyways. Some of the trees have brown patches on them and they dont look too good compared to the other fauna.
The grass height varies. By the bushes it is kinda high, about 5 inches, in the ‘private’ area of his yard it is either no existant or cut.
He has pink flamingos in his yard along with various other deliberate debris, hunks of concrete, rocks varying in sizes from basketball to baseball, strewn in with the bushes.
Methinks he is trying to kill the weeds by placing the debris to prevent growth.
He has a sort of bench thingys set up around the base of a tree, who has seen better days.
At first the guy would sweep his driveway after it rained and the river came. The river would bring all sorts of strange things, from empties to porn magazine inserts.
Mr “Half-ass Gardner”(Hag) guy musta hada idear. The water would come aross his driveway and bring debris. I’ll place a board next to the driveway. The board was a 2x4 about 6 feet in length.
The river cared not. Debris got by the board, and the river ‘moved’ the board onto the driveway.
Mr Hag decided to remedy the board situation and planted it in the ground next to his driveway. The river at first lost, but then one. The river stopped at the Hag’s board, made a big ole puddle, then flowed over the board, on its merry way.
So now there is a big ole puddle(standing water) next to his driveway in his yard and in my yard. The grass died. Hag was happy, his driveway was kinda sorta clean. Eventually the water seeped into the ground, leaving a dead area.
More rain than you can shake a stick at. The board did nothing. The Hag augmented his board with stones. Stones! What a great idea. I reseeded the spot, cause I hate it when my yard looks like crappy.
Enter the Hurricane. The waters from the Hurricane wtfpwned the pitful dam.
The stones covered his entire driveway, which was also covered by water. The big ole puddle made a cameo and got bigger and deeper. And it hung around for a bit. Almost could be called pond. Considered buying goldfish for it.
Mr Hag the engineer undaunted by mother nature and the debris and the fact that his board was gone to the hereafter, commensed with dam number 2. New and improved with sand, rocks and two 4x4’s.
Excavation. The neighbor toiled about his yard. He dug a trench. It was six inches deep and ran the lenght of the driveway. In it he interred the first board. He covered it with sand and put rocks on either side of it. He then put the other board on top of it and nailed it to the other board. He then put the rest of the sand and stone mixture on top of it.
Mr Hag’s dam was built, and it ‘worked’. It made the big ole puddle into a big ole pond. It became a mosquito breeding ground.
Pond of water become pond o slush in the winter. And his driveway still gets debris, provided that it rains consecutively for 2 days or we get a downpour. Which we do get from time to time.
If Mr Hag put the time and energy he put in his dam project, he’d have a pristine yard, instead of the gawdy looking thing it is now.
If I didnt live where I live I’d sabotage his dam out of spite. I think about it everytime I get bitten by a mosquito. Which is quite a bit.
