And then we built a swimming pool

So I decided to rain garden. And I have to apologize to my friend Sue because I missed meeting her sister and drinking martinis to dig this stupid thing.

I followed the recommendations for sizing my rain garden, which is 10% of the area of roof feeding it. Roughly 500 square feet of roof dumps water into the rain barrel, so my rain garden needed to be about 50 square feet. That's freaking HUGE but I'd rather have too large a rain garden than overflowing water heading toward my house.

So I removed all the sod from the area.

And then I started digging.

And then I got tired and the ground was sort of hard so I decided to leave it for a week so the rain could percolate down.

This didn't help. The ground didn't really soften all that much and yet my yard was now extraordinarily muddy. Then I discovered that the hose that is supposed to drain my rain barrel during the winter wasn't doing that, so instead my rain barrel was dripping water out of the overflow in the side, which meant water was dumping next to the house. I honestly wish I had never put in this stupid rain barrel. It seemed like a good idea at the time but I can't get enough water pressure out of it to actually water anything (I think it needs to be elevated) and I didn't have an overflow system in place, so it's a worthless hunk of wood that dumps water next to my house. Me and rain barrel are totally in a fight.

So I took it out. We will figure out a way to use it somewhere else but we're going to figure out a way to make the overflow work to our advantage. And it's going to be elevated, damn it. But first I had to drain it, so I let it drain into the hole I had going so far. That softened everything up really nicely but I have NEVER been so muddy before.

Once I got the rain barrel moved out from behind the garage I had to hook up this stupid looking contraption because it was raining and the gutter was now hooked up to nothing. No time like the present to test the rain garden.

Then I had to rush and get prettified to go to a work party so I had to finish up the next day. Luckily the rain had stopped and it was freaking beautiful out. More of that, Portland! PLEASE. Greg installed a proper gutter and I rolled the rain barrel off to a corner so it could think about what it did.

We pick up the plants from the Audubon Society next Sunday. I ordered way too many plants or not nearly enough, I can't decide which. It really feels like this rain garden is going to be way too big. If that's the case we're going to re-route some other gutters to here, so they aren't dumping in stupid places (like the walkway next to trashcans WHY, GUTTER INSTALLERS?).

I have to tip my hat to those guys who bury bodies in the woods in the movies, using a solitary shovel by the headlights of an Edsel. That's hard work. I'm super pooped and sore everywhere.

To rain garden or not to rain garden

I've been waffling on big garden projects, excited to get going but unsure if I have the free weekends to put in the work. If I rush home from work I have about an hour and a half where I can work on things before the sun goes down. That will get cut down to 30 minutes once Daylight Savings hits. That's if it's not pouring rain. My big project contemplation right now is the rain garden. I want to put one in front and one in back. 

For anybody not familiar with rain gardens, this is how they work: instead of having your rain gutters empty into the storm drain you treat your storm water on your property. Water from your storm drain ultimately gets dumped into the river, where it's warmer than normal (which means it has less oxygen) and it's full of pollutants. All the critters in the river get stressed because they can't breathe and they're dealing with oil and chemicals that come off of our streets and roofs.

When you treat water on your property it gets slowly filtered into the ground water supply, the pollutants are reduced, and the rivers don't get inundated by water from all of our impervious surfaces (roofs, driveways, streets, patio slabs, etc).So you dig a pit where water can collect, plant it with native species, and mulch the hell out of it. Did you know that microbial activity in mulch helps break down some of the common pollutants in stormwater? TAKE THIS INFORMATION AND GO BE INSUFFERABLE AT DINNER PARTIES. Then you divert your gutters to drain into this instead of your storm drain.

Before you start planning your garden you need to do a percolation test, to see if your soil drains quickly enough to withstand one.

So you dig a hole. I thought I heard somewhere that it should be 12x12x12, so that's what I dug. It turns out I can't find any documentation saying that 12x12x12 is the way to go. So maybe I dug a larger hole than necessary? Ideally you're supposed to do your perc test in the spring when the ground is really water logged, but I can't be counted on to follow directions, obviously.

Then you fill your hole and let it drain completely. Then you fill it a second time and let it drain. Then you fill it a third time and set your timer for an hour. At that time you look at how inches of water drained and *that's* a pretty good indicator of your drainage. Anything over 2 inches per hour is good. 

Mine drained 8 inches in an hour. After two hours all but the smallest puddle was gone.

So now I'm worried that my property is *too* well draining and that I'm actually living atop a giant sandpit that will collapse once I install my rain garden. Worrying is what I do and, damn it, I'm good at it.

If your property won't accommodate a rain garden, don't worry, you can still be insufferable at dinner parties! You can plant a tree instead. They are super good at sucking up water on your property. True story.

Has anyone built one of these before? Should I wait until spring? Would you like to help me dig? (I'll bake bread and cookies!)

Or would you like to help me plant the 150 bulbs I ordered? I swear I don't remember ordering half of these which is why you should never, ever drink wine when there are plant catalogs in the house.

Habitat! Sweet habitat!

I did it!  The Audubon Society certified my yard as backyard habitat! 

Getting this entailed a bunch of stuff (all of it here) including turning 5% of my available yard (and boy do they measure) over to native plants, disconnecting my downspouts, having a birdbath, practicing integrated pest management (no pesticides), and removing aggressive weeds (like all the Himalayan blackberry).  I had to bicker a little with the woman at the end over heuchera and whether it's native (turns out it counts as a native plant).

There are a lot of benefits to getting certified (like insanely cheap native plants) but I mostly wanted the bragging rights. And I'm still enough of a hippie that I dig being part of a program that is trying to encourage habitat for native species.  It also helps that native plants in the northwest are so pretty.  I'm really excited for everything to start growing again this spring so I can see who decides to fly in and visit me.  This last season was mostly hummingbirds (yay!) and crows (boo).

The rep from The Audubon Society said my front yard would a good contender for a rain garden.  A rain garden harvests the storm water from your property and, instead of dumping it in the sewer, directs it to a densely planted area that allows the water to naturally percolate into the ground, much like it would in a forest.  They offer free classes in Portland so I think I'll sign up and look into it. 

 

Image lifted from here.

I'm so excited!