It doesn't look like much....

But this patch of dirt may retain my husband's sanity. It POURED down rain last night. We didn't freak out because we've got new gutters and they should be alleviating those pesky problems of old- water spouting everywhere and eventually ending up in our basement. Sunday morning we peeked in to see how they fared....and ended up hauling 10 buckets of water out of the basement (gotta love the ShopVac!) Which indicates SOMETHING still isn't quite right. So on Sunday Via Colori (chalk painting festival) was cancelled due to rain (Mary was supposed to work all day). Late enough in the afternoon (3PM) the rain ceased and Eric decided to channel all of the water from the gutters on the east side of the house into a pipe and off the hill at the front of the house.

Look above at the white PVC pipes attached to the gutters and into the ground. Now envision a 30 foot long, 8 inch deep trench running from the pipe back by the fence all the way out to the front hill of the yard (out of the photo). The lovely patch of dirt used to be grass-ish stuff. We spent the afternoon, early evening, dusk and just after dark (8:40) digging a trench, running 4" PVC piping the length of it and attached to the downspouts, running to Lowe's for properly fitting fixtures (who KNEW there's thin wall and thick wall PVC pipes - each with their OWN accompanying attachments - not us and we started off with the wrong ones!), glueing the various components together and shovelling as much dirt as possible back on top! Along the way we encountered lots of roots, old chain link fence post stakes (2) and a massive block of concrete with the sawed off end of a fence pole that were in our way! We removed everything but the stubborn concrete and pole. Although we persevered with a sledge hammer and managed to removed about 8 inches of the concrete, we still could not get the pole to budge, much less come out. So Eric smacked it to one side and we routed around it! Now we cross our fingers that the next rain we have a dry basement....pretty please?!

The bonus of Via Colori was the remainder of a keg of CBC beer awaiting return. We iced it down on the way back from Lowe's and shared with our new neighbors. Billy & Michelle thought it was the best housewarming gift yet! And Bogart got to play with their dog Trevor. Much ridiculous puppy fun was had.