Still standing...



Where have I been? Let me explain....


When you last heard from me, things were good in the yard. Soon after...not so much. Living next to water is always risky but for most of the 12 years I'd been here, it's not been a problem. 2011 changed that. Flash flooding was a problem too often to count last year. I'd never seen it do that before and wasn't prepared for the damage to my yard, and the bottom part of my home.

Flash flooding is so much harder on my yard, compared to the BIG flood we had in Pennsylvania (as many states had all up and down the east coast last summer) thanks to Tropical Storm Lee. Flash flooding brings an incredibly forceful rush of water and tears out everything in its path. Which included my yard and plants. And it brings a lot of stuff with it. Tree branches, all sorts of debris (and too much of it man made!), small fish, frogs, small crustaceans, dead and alive. We threw back as many as we could that were still alive. I was stunned at the number of crayfish that were left on land. Hundreds! In a sense though it was good news, the stream was certainly showing signs of health if it was supporting this large number of critters!

One of the flash floods happened so fast, I didn't even realize it was happening until a neighbor knocked on my back window and told me to look outside. It was already up to the bottom of my car. Having been a volunteer fire fighter decades ago, I knew better then to walk in the rushing water. So I called 911, explained the situation as well as my concerns for a disabled neighbor. They asked if the street in front of the park was flooded which I thought odd. I told them it would definately be flooded. I heard the sirens...and unbelievably they stopped out on the street, and they closed it off and left. Luckily the water then stopped rising and my car didn't get any inside.

So next step was to track down all the bags of mulch I'd just bought. I'd already put down several bags on the yard, most of it washed away. I lost 6 bags and found most of them. Over the next days and weeks I got to working on the yard. At least it was Spring, time for renewal. I was pleasantly surprised at some of the plants that survived.

But then another flash flood. If we were getting a fast downpour of 5" I knew to be prepared, but it got to the point, so much damage was being done to the ground - that was already saturated with too much rain, even a sudden measly 3" downpour was a problem. Each flash flood seemed to get more powerful. The worst one in the Spring you see below. It left, in places, up to 2 feet of silt. That's stuff I'll never be able to get rid of. Over a foot and a half of it on my patio that I'd started shoveling at one point, almsot done when it happened yet AGAIN. 


Mother nature is amazing. Frightening, impressive, and wonderful all at once. While many plants got ripped out and washed away, some of them ended up in neighbors yards, or even under their homes, covered in mud and silt and promptly took root. I had to go around, once I wouldn't get mired in muck, dig them back up and bring them home! I think there's still one under my next door neighbors. Plants that had been potted, torn from their container. I'd find one laying about and plop it back in. It would grow again.

It became a game with the neighbors to see what they could find for each other. Landscape timbers....identifying which belonged to who as we all used different sizes. "Hey Tina, I think I have one of your timbers over here" I look and "nope that's Lettie's, I'll tell her it's here" I had to help her get a huge bench out of the stream, where it was hung up on a tree. For the 3rd or so time I had to fix my skirting, which was showing a lot of wear and tear but replacing it didn't seem practical at this point.

I felt bad for the birds afterwards, who were coming in to land at feeders...that weren't there since the pole had been knocked down. That was probably the first thing I did after any flooding was to upright the pole for them.

There had been a bird feeder hanging from the tree that was over my head. So much silt was dropped in my yard that it was then hanging at neck level.  Grass has not grown in this area since.

Here you can see the silt on the patio. It was a lot of work to shovel it all up time and again. Luckily my ex husband loaned me a wheelbarrow, after I had been hauling it all in buckets. Made it a little easier, except when I'd lose the load or get tangled up with it when I'd attempt to right it again and there I'd be, on the ground, my leg wrapped around a handle! Then I'd lay on the ground and laugh, thinking how lucky no one was around to see it. I had to dig out a lot of plants. Luckily many of them survived this.

 A lot of rock came up



Rock, wood, and broken clay pots from a neighbor upstream



This had been my blueberry bushes and the netting protecting it from the birds.
The plants survived, though no fruit.



But you know the ducks still have to eat :)



Initially I felt a little overwhelmed by the prospect of fixing this. But I finally got tired of the ugliness and set about making it right again. Working 7 nights a week added to the challenge but honestly once I decided I was doing it, I didn't hesitate. It took some time to clear out all the debris on my own. I hauled a lot of dirt and rock!



 As everything started to grow again, I found plants I thought were lost. And some plants merely moved to new spots. Some I dug up, a few I left where they landed.







I made a few changes and made some additions.



Put in some potted plants to make up for the lack of color and ease of moving if I had to. (and I would have to!)
I dug up what little grass there was in the front and put in a little herb garden.




 In the background you see all the rocks by the stream? Placed there by PennDot as they treid to save some of the bank from future floods. It was one of the few spots they could get theer equipment in. Nice bunch of guys, who also helped shovel some silt while they were waiting for trucks to arrive. In return I fried them up some home made donuts. I knew this wasn't going to help with the flooding, since something needs to be done upstream from me. But nothing will ever be done. So much building has been done, so much environmental damage that they will never spend the money to fix it. The workers had to dig up my red bud tree (asking permission first). I had to laugh, when they put it back it was in sad shape as the equipment had torn apart some of the branches. Sad looking tree but I told them not to worry about it...being a native plant it would probably survive.

Once the project was done, they did send out a tree specialist to check it out and he agreed it would survive, but he also told me it was a really poor excuse of a tree to begin with. Not surprising as the airport had them put in to make up for all the trees they ripped out a couple years ago (another story) which has contributed a lot to the bank erosion and subsequent flooding.

The workers had dug down about 9 feet removing much muck and debris, plus the small island that had formed in the middle, hoping to give the water a better free flowing path. Before the project was done, the rain came AGAIN, and brought rock and mud and totally filled in what they removed and started forming the island again, and knocked down some of those big rocks!





 I finally completed most of  this in June. Then set about building a small dirt levee along the yard. Slow work that I nearly had complete by the end of August.  But being mostly silt, knew if I didn't get something rooted in there it wouldn't hold up so I went to a nursery that only sells native plants. I find that those are what survived the best, including my precious pawpaw trees. Despite being half buried in silt, they were surviving and growing, and housing the beautiful zebra swallowtal butterfly caterpillars! . But this is what they are used to. I bought more plants, many berry bushes, too, for the birds, and planted them on the levee. Hoping to have time for them to take root and become strong enough to hold it in place. I was excited about how things were shaping up, even if I didn't get any time to actually sit outside and just enjoy the yard. I was hopeful and let my thoughts turn to the possibilities of next Spring!

Weeks later the devastating rain from Tropical Storm Lee came. I'll get back to you about that and also some of the BEST things that happened later last year.

And as a side note, I have come to the blogs and tried to keep up with everything going on with the rest of you!