Ditch Digging

This is just a small part of a willow tree.

Illustrationfriday seems to have been hijacked for someone's personal self promotion so I don't have weekly words anymore.  The Covid 19 pandemic has upset me beyond the forced imprisonment at home.  I had decided to get a dog.  All the shelters are closed.  World events and political idiocy gets me down.  Sympathy for all the people who are or will be suffering is a bigger issue than I can fix. With all this going on I just haven't had the heart for blogging lately.  I've attacked my yard instead.  And my neighbors' yards.

The main duck pond with the tributary ditches I've dug.

I call this the upper duck pond.  If left alone,
I'm pretty sure it would join the other pond.

You see, several years ago Mr. Next Door Neighbor (NDN1) had a dead willow tree on his property.  The city made him cut it down.  Mr. NDN1 had a bad attitude about this and dropped the giant tree into the drainage ditch.  Water has been backing up in all the yards as a result, and the pond of stagnant water that formed in his yard invited ducks and swarms of malarial mosquitoes.  I can't even scream at this jerk because he died.  As I've complained previously, Mrs. NDN1 never does yard work.  The neighbor 2 doors down (2DD) and I have been cutting her grass for years without a thank you or a contribution for gas.  She's certainly not motivated to fix the ditch.

2DD and I discussed burning the willow tree but we agreed the city would probably have an issue with our plan.  I also suggested dynamite.  2DD is aging and can't do ditch digging.  The neighbor on my other side (NDN2) is old and housebound.  He can't do ditch digging either.  I decided to take my housebound frustrations out on hydro-engineering and manual labor.  I've been at this for weeks, ever since Ohio decided I need to shelter in place.

I've been whittling away at this tree root with a hatchet and hammer. 
It may be a life-long project.

The willow tree is no longer the problem.  The current issue is all the other trees and their roots which have grown in the ditch since the jerk started this mess.  I got water to run in the ditch again and dirt and debris blocked it up again.  I dug it out again.  It got clogged again.  3 weeks of this and the ditch is still getting clogged up.  As the water level drops, more roots are exposed which block the water.  Water from uphill poured down.   It rained.  It rained again.  It kept F-ing raining.  I found it hard to offer sympathy to a friend who is living through a drought.

This is how I've been managing my sequestration.  Part of me moans about my sore muscles and many minor injuries and the other part of me is thankful I have a yard unlike people stuck in city apartments.  I look at my birds, threaten my groundhog with my hoe, and toss things in the deer's nest.  I'm determined to have a mosquito-free summer if I'm going to be stuck at home this year. 

Here's some photos of my efforts.  This doesn't even show the whole length of the ditches!

Looking North

Looking South

Looking East -- and yes, that is a lot of directions!

What have you been doing?  Stay well!

"Water"

“Foamies” are brightly colored foam sheets with sticky backs.  They’re made by a local company who did not hire me after a completely competent interview.  “Jason” and “Tiffany” seemed more concerned that I live on the other side of Cleveland than they were about what was in my portfolio.  “Are you sure you can get to work on time with such a long drive?”  “Yes!”  In fact, I said “yes” to that 3 or 4 times, but apparently there’s a black hole in between the east and west sides which cannot be bridged by waking up earlier.  Fine.  I hate waking up early and admit a long drive is a drag, but sometimes you’ve just got to have a job-- even a job making stupid kiddie patterns with Foamies.  Oh.  Maybe my general disdain and/or desperation might’ve leaked through my perfectly poised competence in the interview?  Oops.

I bought Foamies before the interview in order to be familiar with their product and to impress them with my initiative.  Pfft.  I shoved the Foamies in my supply closet to be forgotten until I discovered them in a recent archeological dig in there for a goal I can’t remember.  Since I had recently been in the upstairs storage unearthing frames which are now scattered all over the living room, it seemed like a great time to lay on the couch and cut out colorful shapes.  It might’ve been the first time I’ve related to Henri Matisse’s cut paper period.

Now my house has messes in every room when I’m pretty sure the original goal was to clean house.  This is especially timely since I had company yesterday and plan on more tomorrow, and I’m not sure anyone I’m thinking of giving these treasures to will be as pleased about receiving them as I was about their creation.  It’s also ironic that I’ve been cutting all these colorful things when my original goal was to do a black and white Halloween series.  Ah well.  My next quest could be for my 3-D paint, which I think I may have used up, but I found stained glass paint when I was looking for the 3-D paint…

… After an undetermined time of staring at orange flowers and wondering if I could pass them off as water lilies, or maybe making a Foamie frog, then lunch, and back to pondering orange flowers, it occurred to me that what I’m actually supposed to be doing is cleaning house.  I then had grouchy thoughts about how many times housekeeping has interfered with my potential masterpieces and feeling quite self-righteous, shout “I won’t fall into that trap today!”  Besides, I think a turtle might be better than a frog, and I can never have enough turtles…

This kind of free flowing thought is exactly the sort of thing grownups try to stamp out of us when they uphold discipline and social order and enforce potty training, but precisely the stream of thought necessary for creativity.  We should all paddle in that canoe and forget what the grownups want.  The relative cleanliness of my house isn’t as important as a Foamie turtle.

"Diary"

Dear Diary (Friday),

This hasn't been a good week, and to make matters worse, the pipes to the kitchen sink broke this morning while I was sleeping. A cascading waterfall ran down the steps, and water leaked through the hardwood floors to the basement, which may explain why water is also spraying out of the heating ducts?

I shut off the water and started mopping and sponging. I had to take everything out of the cupboards and sop out everything in there too. Piles of stuff are stacked up everywhere.

Then it started to rain outside.

I went to the store in the downpour and bought critical supplies -- chips, M&M's, and Pepsi. I don't care what Dr. Phil would say at this particular moment. Sometimes the best possible thing is to medicate with comfort food and take a step back. I can deal with Chinese printers who don't speak English, impossible deadlines, changing software, and so many other things, but plumbing brings me to my knees. I can see why the Romans gave up plumbing after Herculaneum got smothered by a volcano.

Dear Diary (Saturday),

I almost had a break down this morning when I realized water was still leaking above the shut off valve in the kitchen, dripping down the pipe, through the floor, and into the basement. I turned off the shut off valve in the basement, which immediately leaked a stream of very cold water down my arm, straight into my arm pit.

The obvious solution was to go to garage sales because I couldn't deal with any more water issues. I bought a planter for 50 cents. I may put a cactus in it because I don't want to look at any more water. I was up late last night sopping things up in the basement, and there are still puddles down there.

Deep breath and a time out...

I put a washer in the kitchen shut off valve, dismantled the water supply, and sat on the kitchen floor deeply mystified why things weren't working. It all looked like it should work. I made some adjustments to the fittings, reassembled, turned the water back on, and held my breath. So far, so good. Shhhhhh.... I feel superstitious about upsetting the plumbing god right now.

There's kitchen stuff all over the house, the basement is still a soggy mess, and I've just discovered another area in the basement which got drenched, but maybe, just maybe the worst is over? Or maybe the worst will be over once I pay for the water lost -- which I'm pretty sure would fill at least 3 swimming pools.

Maybe the bright side of all this is that my furnace ducts have been very thoroughly rinsed with water. I don't want to die of black mold, so I'm pretty sure I'm the only one in Ohio with the furnace set to 95 to push hot air through the ducts.

Dear Diary (Sunday),

My feet and ankles hurt, and the last thing I want to do on a perfect summer day is spend it in a dank basement. I've discovered that paint cans begin to rust and clothes get musty within 2 days. A fan will help water evaporate by moving air around. Wet cardboard boxes don't hold anything, and newspaper wrapped around dishes holds about 3X more water than the paper's mass. There are a lot of steps down to my basement, and even more steps going up. Above all, I have learned that I really don't need everything in the basement!