damaged?

The rains eventually stopped and though my bucket shows many inches of rain, and the weather people say it totaled to more than the whole rest of the month did, it honestly did not feel torrential or especially damaging. Just a summer rain. Farmers were cheering. As were most gardeners. 

I get up slowly to see what's what outside, though I already know what I will find: the front looks good...

 

 

 

The back? Less so. The squishy ground by the fence, holes filled to the top with water... 

  

 

 

... the newly planted roses moving around as if in raw cake batter if you stepped near them.

I sit down to breakfast, but do not feel the quiet serenity of the morning. Too busy studying my list of plants and trying to figure out what to move where.

New Dawn and Lady of Shallot are the two roses that are worst off. They really need to be moved quickly. Some of the others may or may not be damaged. I can't tell the degree of saturation. My new lilac and mockorange also need to be planted. I'll get to that today as well. And I have to rethink where to plant the Lark Ascending rose. She was supposed to go where I'm now moving one of the others. [You have to love those names! David Austin roses are all like that and some of the other breeders also tend toward the poetic. I'm looking, for example, at another rose that tempts me called "Lady of the Lake."]

I spend nearly five hours reworking stuff in the water-logged yard. The bigger issue is looming before me: the builders are responsible for directing water to the street or to drain ditches. Not to the neighbor's yard. All those years of teaching Property Law are suddenly coming back to me. It was always so theoretical -- other people's property problems. Water is a big issue as I'm sure you know. Too much of it, as a result of someone's manipulation, or too little -- also as a result of interventions. Yes, I can make a big deal of this, but do I really want to? And amass legal fees? Lawyers working on property claims charge by the hour. No contingency arrangements here because there are no big payouts. You sue to get the guy to stop flooding your land, not to give you large sums of money. Ed's advice is to start small. Try to mitigate the damage. Redirect the spout, that kind of thing. But I see that small adjustments will never give me a full resolution. Their property isn't saturated! It's graded to flow toward me. You're not squishing along if you step on their lawn (as I did, just to check it out). Ah well, I'll meet with the builders and see what they say.

(The less troubled roses outside the fenced yard...)

 

 

Millie comes home in mid afternoon. Julie tells me she played nonstop with the other dog there. I ask (with lots of ambivalence) if Millie would be happier with a playmate here. Julie answers with a hard no. Millie does best when she is focused on her person at home. She has a good off switch then and knows how to slow down when she is overtired. I wasn't really thinking of adding a pup. But it's good to know that both she and I are good this way -- together, just the two of us.

(at her watch post)

 

 

With so much love...