How much rain did you get?

I got a total of 8" all told yesterday. Thank goodness I had surface drains installed in my back and side yard last summer. Last summer I lost so many plants due to flooding and standing water for days on end, now with the yard drains there is no standing water whatsoever. And my living room no longer gets soaked due to water runoff with nowhere to go.

Mitch, I thought about you when I watched the Red Oak flooding on the news at 10pm. I'm glad to hear that water in your house was minimal. So, how much rain did everyone receive yesterday?

Carla

We live in Hill Country, about 30 minutes SW of Downtown Austin. We also have what my husband calls a magical wedge that moves the storms either east or west of us most of the time.

Our total rainfall was 1.5 inches.

I hope everyone is OK and drying out.

Pam

We had over 5" . It's not a problem for me as I live on a hill, but many folks around our area were flooded out. I'd much rather hve flooding than drought. All the lakes are full now!! My pond is even full!!

about a halfa inch here.

hope this year isn't a repeat of last year. I don't want to make ark-building plans...

We got .02 inches here. We are always on the tail end of all fronts. But.........always on the front end of tropical storms.
Susie

We got 1 inch. I'm comfortable with that. We also seem to be in some sort of a wedge which I call the Texas-Bermuda Triangle. The larger nastier thunderstorm cells passed mostly west of us although we were on a Tornado Watch for most of the day. I wish we had received this rain back in the December through February period, but it seems to be feast or famine with rain. We spent a ton of money seeding winter annual rye in our pastures in the fall. It barely grew because this winter was so dry. It is also possible that what we are seeing is due to the 3.75" of rain we received the day after we seeded. That deluge could have washed most of the seed away.

I do hope everyone is safe. Floods are so dangerous. We have a low water crossing as our only exit from the ranch and at times have been marooned. Last year, 42 Texans lost their lives due to floods.

We received about 2.5" and I was so happy that our drainage solution worked. See pic of dry creek, which wasn't so dry yesterday!

Hey Liz! What is the name of the aster you gave us at Melva's?

I just responded to the other thread - the aster was called October Skies and is a purple/blue with a yellow center.

Liz

I just saw your response, Thanks!

TxLiz ~ I love your dry creek! Needing to do something similar here to improve drainage past the house. Tell me what all you did or had done to construct that please...

One fourth inch of rain total and about 8 inches of wind! Phew!

Send that dratted rain down here!

One was burning out of control last night...crossed three counties (Hidalgo, Brooks and Willacy) the exact count of acreage isn't known...but some reports 17,000 other say 50,000 acres and still counting. Our winds were 30-45mph so that made it worse. They say the flames reached up 30 to 40 feet into the air and the path was 18 miles wide.

We had fire crews from all the local cities as well as planes and tankers from Austin and San Antonio come down with fire retardant foam. It's still burning but under control.

On a good note no lives have been lost. Four houses were burned to the ground.

http://www.themonitor.com/articles/declared_10033___article.html/through_emergency.html

~ Cat

This message was edited Mar 19, 2008 9:01 PM

Yes, we wish it was all better distributed, sorry about the fires Cat.
We had 3 1/4 inches quite respectable, no flooding problems thank God.
Josephine.

So sorry to hear about the fires. Yes, a blessing no one was injured.

Podster - we had a serious drainage issue on the East side of house where our roof drained (no gutters) along with neighbors house (again no gutters - cheap builders!) and his 18 ft. driveway that comes to the porperty line into a 10 ft wide area along the 50ft of house length. Houses were so close that our neighbors could watch our TV in Fam room from their breakfast nook. We first built a fence anchored with columns that will be venetian plastered (not done yet) with a retaining wall on our side - soon to be a herb garden. all the water flows into a swail that flows to the dry creek.

To construct the dry creek we drew out the layout (using old garden hoses - yes, I keep those with holes in them just for this purpose) then we began digging the stream. Used a 2 ft level taped to an 8 ft straight 2X4. You would think as contractors we would have a 6 ft level, but alas it was stolen when our storage/shop was broken into and we lost over $7K of tools-OUCH! Anyway, making sure that we kept the slope to about a 1/2 bubble down grade we dug the "creek", making sure we kept the levels in to the approx. grade to marry to the swail between our house and the newly constructed ret wall. Once we were happy with the layout, and the grade, we installed the green steel bender board. This step was to curb any invasive plants on the beds on either side to NOT grow into the creek.

We also took the time to install drainage culverts from any future downspouts to the creek from the front of the house and the side of the house to go to the creek. We dug trenches, laid the hoses, added the fittings to match the downspout, and then filled the dirt back over - AGAIN ensuring that the grade was correct and would flow to the street.

Next was the plastic liner. Basic 20mil plastic to keep weeds from growing. I am constantly looking for cheap ways to do things. My neighbor is a pool guy and brought us some leftover plastic, so we used that.

Last step was to go to the rock yard and purchased the river rock. For our 35 ft creek we used 3 yards of rock.

Hubby wanted to accent the bed with larger boulders. Again, my cheapness raised its ugly head, and considering the rock yard wanted over a $1000 for a few boulders, I went on a hunt. A new house was being constructed about 2 miles from my house and had these BEAUTIFUL unearthed bedrock pieces. Hubby, my neighbor and I went and harvested them after discussing wiht the builder. Builder was extremely happy that we took them (he had less to dispose of) and we got them for free.

We placed our new beauties in the bed on the edges in strategic spots (like where the creek curves) and surrounded with the river rock. We even have some of the bedrock pieces in the center of the "stream" again, trying for that natural look. I added pink muhly grass on the slow water side of the large boulders - again, a more natural look.

Now all that is left is to finish the venetian plaster on the columns and ret. wall, and build the deck. Ohh yeah, we will install a door from our breakfast room to the deck, so I can easliy go out to harvest herbs for cooking. See pic of soon to be deck area.

BTW, hubby can't WAIT for all my projects to be done so we can enjoy the hosue instead of remodeling it.

L

Thanks for sharing that, Lizzy. I have the exact same problem on the side of our house due to our neighbors not having any gutters. Your dry creek bed is great-looking.

no problem, It seemed the best way to catch it all. Thanks for the compliment. I am happy with our design. Hubby keeps urging me to go back to school for landscape design. I enjoy doing the hardscape as much as the greenscape.

TxLiz ~ I agree ~ the dry creek is stunning. Your DH may be right for landscape design. I am impressed. I will look forward to photos as you go along.

When y'all mention neighbors with no rain gutters, if they had them, where would the drainage be dumped from the gutters? Still on ground or in city sewer or ?

My drainage problem is runoff and I have been kicking around some ideas. This one I like ~ thank you!

Podster, that's a good question about the gutter-less neighbors. I guess the water would be more evenly distributed down the gutters (if he had them), into the drainpipes and out into his yard instead of flowing heavily down the steepest part of his roof and into MY yard.

It's frustrating for me because I have all mulch and xeriscape plants on that side of my yard. The water flows from his yard down the front of mine and washes half my mulch away. Plus, the plants that were put in because of their drought tolerance are now getting drowned. : (

TexasTam, maybe you can talk you next door neighbor into sharing the cost of a drainage stream situated between the two properties. It could be that what comes in your yard becomes your problem. If your house is new in a new subdivision, you may be able to force the builder to re-grade the yard in the area where the problem is located. Consider a well-placed shallow berm or low wall dividing the properties to force the water to stay in his property.