My Actifit/Garden/Ulog Report Card: October 12 2018

_{culvert taken from the street}

Another day with not so many activity points but a very sore body.

I had plans for today. They had nothing to do with shoveling and lifting and carrying and such.

The plans included writing and blogging and podcast editing

Then, my son in law came over and everything changed.

He told me that it was supposed to rain today.

I stopped checking the forecast since it never seems to actually rain. He assured me that it was the real thing.

I had to spring into action!

The culvert you see in the picture above collects water from a whole city block. When it rains, so much water comes through there - it is like a raging river.

It doesn't rain very often. We had a short 20-minute rain a couple of weeks ago - but before that, nothing since January.

So all kinds of things accumulate in that ditch. Much of it is not what I want in my garden.

_{Say no to cigarette butts all over the place!!}

First, I pulled out the palm fronds that had accumulated since my last palm cleanup. I cut back some branches that kept hitting me in the head and set to work to shovel out the mess.

A gopher had managed to push a bunch of soil into the ditch right where the water is coming in from the other side of the street. If I am not digging it up, it will be pushed all over - or, it will build a dam and cause flooding.

I dug up almost 10 buckets of soil in that one spot. I spread that on the foot of the palm tree away from the culvert. Look what I found while doing that.

I have dragon fruit climbing up the palm (or scratching me if I park too close to the tree). This is the first year that the plant is producing fruit. I hope it is a good one!

After much shoveling of dirt and leaves and such, it finally looked like the water had clear sailing.

I filled 2 large trashcans with dirt, leaves, plastic, cigarette butts and such to go to the landfill. Usually, I am all for keeping all organic material on my property, but I make an exception for this. The amount of trash which ends up in the ditch is amazing. Plus, the first runoff from the street is not the best thing to have around.

That is why I keep the geraniums growing into the ditch. They are catching a lot of debris and prevent it from ending up in my yard.

_{Geranium pollutant trap}

As you can see in the picture, there is alos chicken wire mesh under the fence. This also helps to trap a lot of the larger solids.

After I was done with the front, it was time to tackle the backyard part. About halfway into the yard, I build a little dam in the culvert and a big ditch to divert the water into. It holds the water and allows it to sink into the landscape.

The dam has an overflow - very necessary. Otherwise, I would flood my neighbor.

I also re-dug a sinkhole to allow the water coming in to drop any solid pollutants it might have brought along through all the former defense systems.

Behind the dam, I made sure to clean up all the leaves and such so we don't have a buildup where the water is supposed to leave my property. We see how it goes. It is raining right now.

Here is the sound of rain filling my water harvesting barrel. It is like music to my ears!

At about 5 PM, my husband texted me to ask if it looked like rain. This is the picture I send him.

It didn't really look like rain to me. But I am glad I finished the project, even though it took me till after it became dark. Tomorrow, I share some pictures of the rain filling my water harvesting ditch!

For all that soreness I am feeling in my body right now, I have to say I was hoping for way more activity points

Daily Activity