I've buried lots of things in our yard. Leaves. Vegetable scraps. Goldfish. The time capsule that my daughter made in grade school (alas, we forgot to mark the spot).
Once, in 1968, I buried a phonograph record: "Honey," by Bobby Goldsboro. It was an awful song that the whole world was humming. In a fit of pique, I bought the record, threw "Honey" down a hole beneath a maple tree and covered it with dirt. I felt a lot better after that, and the maple didn't seem to mind. See the tree, how big it's grown?
I've sunk dozens of items into Mother Earth, with good success until last week.
That's when I tried to bury water.
I'd never tried to hide water before. However, I was desperate. Rain leaves puddles in all the wrong places. For instance, the downspout on the house drains onto the driveway which, in cold weather, turns into a skating rink.
How slick is it? Nancy Kerrigan could practice there. I've quit using the driveway in winter. The cars can't navigate it, and I can't afford to drive a Zamboni.
Last year was the worst. The driveway was impassable from December to March. Clearly, the water had to go, and our solution was to pipe it underground, away from the asphalt.
We bought a 10-foot piece of plastic pipe, attached one end to the downspout and buried the rest in a narrow trench I dug myself. It wasn't easy. Ever try to remove soil from a skinny ditch? The shovel gets wedged in the hole; the dirt won't lift out. Finally, in exasperation, I fell to my knees and began grabbing soil from the bottom of the trench, pawing it out by the fistful.
Puzzled, Katydid the dog sauntered over, barked at the trench, then wagged her tail and started digging beside me. Periodically Katydid looked up from the hole with a puzzled look, as if to say, "Are you sure it's OK to do this?"
The two of us dug like crazy. Then I placed the pipe, which resembles an overgrown Slinky, in the bottom of the trench and covered it with a bit of soil before replacing the clumps of grass that I'd carefully removed beforehand. The green "wigs" fit perfectly.
We stood back and admired our work. The buried pipe would carry the rainwater around the driveway, emptying into a hand-dug pit filled with small stones to promote drainage.
It started raining that night, and I awoke the next morning to the sound of water spilling from the rooftop gutters and streaming down the sides of the house. The water had no place else to go. In a matter of hours, the pit at the end of the pipe had become a pond, forcing the water to back up to the roof.
Uh-oh. I imagined this happening in winter. The outside of the house would freeze like an igloo, trapping us inside until spring. Egad! My mind began that frantic winter chant: milk, bread, toilet paper . . . milk, bread, toilet paper . . .
I grabbed the shovel and sloughed outside in the storm to dig a second trench, this one leading away from the new-made pond.
The next few hours are a blur. I remember digging the gloppy trench, then four or five more of them, to no avail. Water continued to pour from the pipe as though from an open spigot. I remember the sound of mud being sucked from the ground by a shovel. The soil was saturated. Digging those holes was like digging a moat for a sand castle at the beach: Water seems to bubble up from China.
Then the skies cleared, the water subsided and the pipe's runoff slowed to a trickle. I surveyed the damage. The yard had #F become a messy maze of muddy trenches and foxholes. It looked like a battle scene from "All Quiet on the Western Front."
In several days, when the ground dries, I'll get more pipe, fasten it together and bury it in these holes. The new trenches are longer than the first one, extending far down out hillside for better drainage.
Digging these ditches was back-breaking work. The soil was wet and heavy. I kept hoping to tap into a mole tunnel that would help me finish the job. Where are those pesky critters when you need them?
I'm pretty sure the new trenches will do the trick, though I'm worried about their effect on the environment. With so many Slinkies out there, the yard is beginning to look like the Alaskan pipeline. That's bad. The pipeline has upset the caribou and reindeer population ever since it was built. (Many are not quite sure how to get around it.) What if my underground pipeline has the same effect on wildlife hereabout?
I'd hate to think I was separating my earthworms from their loved ones.