Rain Garden

Got a lot of water running off your roof?

I'm deciding to build a rain garden for a number of reasons:
1) I already have water running toward my foundation instead of away,
2) I'd like to attract more butterflies and maybe hummingbirds to my garden, and
3) maybe there are some benefits to be had on my utility bill.

So first you dig a hole and see how quickly the water will drain into the soil. This soil drains fairly quickly, I must say!


My neighbors and I decide that it's a good idea to build a rain garden to take all the water running off the roof and put it to good use. So I stake out the garden and then they tell me that they've committed themselves to redoing their basement, so I scale back, leaving them the option to join in at a later date.
So I start digging Saturday and I'm thinking I'm getting so far along. I'm digging the good grass into the back yard where I have bunches of creeping charlie. Yeah, I'm getting really far...and about mid-afternoon, I start reading a book in the sun, because I figure I deserve a break. My back hurts and it's time to stop...

But when I get up on Sunday morning and look out the front window, I'm thinking...

What the heck was I doing all day yesterday??? (As you can see there wasn't much progress).



So when I started today, I decided not to do anything else but dig out grass. I wanted to feel as though I got something done in the direction that I wanted to go today...so I dig and did not do much else. I started on 10 a.m. with a plan to be done at 3 p.m.

By 11 a.m., I've run into a couple of roots that seem to run all the way across my planned rain garden. But I dig onward...I will prevail.



And I gather my cutting tools, because roots are not going to stop me. I sharpen my shovel...

Noonish









1:00 p.m.I'm taking the last shovels of sod out, and the roots, which I've left until I exposed as much of them as I could. (It's rather like the measure twice, cut once philosophy).






2:45 p.m. It's all leveled and everything is dug out. The next steps will be to throw in some compost, the plants and seeds and then mulch it all. I draw a hot bath at this point.

This is the view at 3 p.m. (I think you get the idea)