driveway after some repairs...

looks like my driveway Lori...at the moment there is torrential rain and it looks like a river!

Oh dear Lori...still...a much better day when you took this. :)

Some jobs are never ending Lori ,we have rain water running down our drive it then collects at the side of the house :o(

Hello Sandra... I've heard about your Welsh water wealth this summer. have you had many sunny days? This summer has managed to instill a sense of irony ... ;-) As I recall you had a reasonably good summer year before and ours was dismal...this summer we've had a better summer and yours sounds like it was less than great. let's pray that next summer we both get a good one! Did you have good results in the poly-tunnel?
We have had a better summer ...a little more sunshine than rain, Karen. Thankful because if it was like last summer I would be very depressed!
So true, Amy. What would I do with all my free time, if I didn't have to dig the pond and repair the drive? lol... ;-) will you have to call in a contractor?

Tony dug a culvert outside our gate Lori it helps but when we have torrential rain it goes straight over it , we then need wellie boots to reach the gate Lol ... luckily as soon as it stops raining it drains away quite quickly !

I've been reading some very old texts about "french drains", would that work for you? I've seen pictures of the drains which look like a shallow indentation in the lawn. It is a trench filled with rock and sodded overtop.

It could do Lori, Thanks I'll google it , we have some old land drainpipes which they use to use for draining farm land I'm wondering if they are the same thing !

i have enjoyed our summer Lori..its had its ups and downs...but there has been much less time and stress over watering the nursery stock which has aloud more time for other things. the tunnel has been very productive and is still producing tomatoes and cucumbers as well as the odd marrow lurking in the undergrowth. after even more torrential rain yesterday we had a glorious day today and i spent the evening with my trust strimmer and i am hopeing for two sunny days on the trot.

so glad you had a good summer your sunflower looks great how was your greenhouse?

hmm. I'm not sure if they are the same Amy. Sometimes the FD's don't have any pipes at all...just a ditch filled with rock, far as I can tell. I'm sure there's plenty on Google or Wiki.
ah yes, the marrows. any chance of a record breaker this year, Sandra?
I'm moving my greenhouse to a spot nearer the backdoor of our house and sinking it into the ground. It will be much easier to heat that way. As it is, it sits above ground level on a wood platform and it's not an efficient passive heat accumulator!

No they're not the same Lori I Googled and it would appear the French Drains are exactly as Tony has done ours . he dug a deep trench filling with stones .. the land drainage pipes are a different thing no longer used in our modern days I have some for garden decoration ...

closer to the house would be more convenient Lori.. sinking it into the ground sounds like a great plan. another ob on the list!

at one time, here on the property, someone tried to use white poly drainage pipes to stop erosion in the creek valley... problem is, it had the opposite effect. there were spots that were washing out because of the pipes underground. As soon as I removed the pipes the soil settled and stabilized and the water, which always seeks the lowest level carved it's own path down the valley and it's deep enough now that it doesn't erode the banks of the stream as it once did. Wonder what it was about the old pipes that made them obsolete? Perhaps you can take up the issue of drainage when they convene the council meeting about development?
Yes, I don't know why I wasn't smart enough to do that in the first place, Sandra! the list is long and full of terrors. LOL...

The old drainage pipes weren't buried deep enough in the fields for the modern heavy tractors , combines ,farm machinery Lori they were constantly being dug-up and broken , we live in an area which borders onto what they call 'The Fens ' very flat land which was at one time mainly under water they took inspiration from the Dutch people creating great wide ditches miles long almost like rivers criss- crossing the land with windmills to drain off the water ,even now the sea is a constant threat eating away at the shoreline every winter more houses tumble in to the sea , our nearest seaside town has flood barriers which cross the roads at high tides ,in 1953 hundreds of people were drowned in the night at a high tide ...you may be able to google it ,flood of Norfolk 1953 ... I believe the intention is to deliberately allow some areas to flood hoping it will act as a kind of sponge stopping the sea from coming any further in land ....

how terrible... I'll have to do a search for that, Amy. The people talking about the need to do something about climate change (rising sea levels) have been publishing some interesting prognostications! I have seen pictures to illustrate the shorelines of the eastern seaboard of Canada and the U.S. if the arctic melt continues. It should be of concern to all of us, and would mean some polders in the fens? I would love to see England and the lowlands in spring...especially the tulip festivals in the Netherlands and the fields of tulips in a rainbow of colour. It must be spectacular. I'm off to check out the flood of Norfolk 1953.