Rain Garden Part I (of many I'm sure)

I decided the last weekend to start digging out the rain garden. Nehi was actually a great help- as soon as she saw where I wanted to dig, she continued it. I worked more on it after it rained, which was acutally MUCH easier as the four gazillion roots from the pine trees are easier to work around when the sand is wet.

Right now it's just a huge hole in the ground. And I'm not finished digging. And it obviously doesn't do it's job yet because it's not all the way dug out, there are no plants and no mulch. BUT, I think it's going to look really nice and hopefully, prevent this kind of flooding due to run off. A lot of the problem right now, it that we've had really big, flooding rains for the last two months, and no time for the ground to dry out, so it's saturated. At this point, I wish we had snow- easier to deal with in many ways.
Anyway, the two main problems with our flooding is that we 1) have run off from the property behind us (which hopefully the rain garden will fix) and 2)run off from our own roof, because like most houses down here, there are no gutters. I hope to fix that when I have the money to install gutters and rain barrels, but that's a way off I think, as money is tight.
So, that's where we are now. Hopefully, can get the rest of it dug out the next week or so (when it's maybe a little warmer). Then it's just a matter of waiting a couple of weeks until I can plant and put the mulch down. Maybe the mulch will also act as a but if a deterent to Nehi.

Not holding my breath on that one though!