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Extreme Gardening
May. 27th, 2023 11:31 pmSo today I was outside, vacuuming the garden.
Totally normal, right?
Don't worry, there was method to my madness. As I've been posting about here, Auckland has had three one in a hundred year flooding events this year so far. And as a result of this I've discovered that when the rain is so intense that the downpipe can't handle it, the rain overflows the gutter and runs underneath the house. The house is on concrete piles, and there isn't much likelihood of the earth eroding so much it endangers the piles. Nevertheless, my feeling is that if you have water running under your house, try not to have water running under your house. The question was what to do about it.
Back in February when we had a less than welcome visit from Cyclone Gabrielle, some people were using sandbags to protect their properties. I didn't bother with this, as not only did I not realise then about the water underneath the house problem, I'm also far too lazy to dig up sand (the sandbags were free, but you had to fill them yourself). Once I saw the water disappearing ominously under the house, though, I had to admit that sandbags would have been quite handy.
So when a couple of weeks ago we had Flooding Event Three, I wondered if there was anything I could do about it (short of digging up sand, of course. Not going to happen). And my eye happened to fall upon the large pile of crystal litter bags in my garage.
The shortages and uncertain supply of things we've had during and since Covid have made me a bulk shopper. Crystal litter was out of stock for months, and as a result, when I did see it I bought it. It's still difficult to get even now. So I had quite a stack of what looked encouragingly a bit like sandbags.
It seemed almost too easy, but they worked like a charm. They were just the right size and I had just enough of them to block the gap the water runs into. A combination of my crystal litter fortress and a lot of buckets and containers (and a lot of bailing) further up the gutter meant that in the last atmospheric river I corralled the water near the house completely. Hurray!
There was just one tiny little problem. I knew from buying the litter in the supermarket that I had to be careful to get bags that didn't have holes in them where the plastic had split, so I knew the bags were quite delicate. I was very careful with them, but they've been moved in and out of the garage for heavy rain several times now and I knew I was dicing with danger.
Sure enough, this morning as I moved the bags back into the garage again, the inevitable happened. One of the bags split as I picked it up and crystal litter cascaded over the lawn. I managed to sweep up some of it with a dustpan and brush, but there was still quite a bit left on (and in) the lawn.
Now, I'm not the world's most fastidious gardener. I don't have the time and I don't have the inclination. But even I draw the line at a lawn festooned with litter. What to do about it, though?
Crystal litter is great in many ways, but it's the very devil for getting underfoot. So much so that I bought a special litter-only vacuum cleaner that I station where the litterbox is. We call it the Poover. It's only a $30 job from Target, but because it plugs in it has more litter-sucking power than my expensive cordless. If I put the crevice tool on the cordless, however, it's more than up to the job. And if it works in the house, why not outside?
And it did. It obligingly sucked up all the spilt litter and returned my lawn to its usual ramshackle, but at least not crystal-infested, state. I only hope the neighbours didn't see me vacuuming the grass.
Totally normal, right?
Don't worry, there was method to my madness. As I've been posting about here, Auckland has had three one in a hundred year flooding events this year so far. And as a result of this I've discovered that when the rain is so intense that the downpipe can't handle it, the rain overflows the gutter and runs underneath the house. The house is on concrete piles, and there isn't much likelihood of the earth eroding so much it endangers the piles. Nevertheless, my feeling is that if you have water running under your house, try not to have water running under your house. The question was what to do about it.
Back in February when we had a less than welcome visit from Cyclone Gabrielle, some people were using sandbags to protect their properties. I didn't bother with this, as not only did I not realise then about the water underneath the house problem, I'm also far too lazy to dig up sand (the sandbags were free, but you had to fill them yourself). Once I saw the water disappearing ominously under the house, though, I had to admit that sandbags would have been quite handy.
So when a couple of weeks ago we had Flooding Event Three, I wondered if there was anything I could do about it (short of digging up sand, of course. Not going to happen). And my eye happened to fall upon the large pile of crystal litter bags in my garage.
The shortages and uncertain supply of things we've had during and since Covid have made me a bulk shopper. Crystal litter was out of stock for months, and as a result, when I did see it I bought it. It's still difficult to get even now. So I had quite a stack of what looked encouragingly a bit like sandbags.
It seemed almost too easy, but they worked like a charm. They were just the right size and I had just enough of them to block the gap the water runs into. A combination of my crystal litter fortress and a lot of buckets and containers (and a lot of bailing) further up the gutter meant that in the last atmospheric river I corralled the water near the house completely. Hurray!
There was just one tiny little problem. I knew from buying the litter in the supermarket that I had to be careful to get bags that didn't have holes in them where the plastic had split, so I knew the bags were quite delicate. I was very careful with them, but they've been moved in and out of the garage for heavy rain several times now and I knew I was dicing with danger.
Sure enough, this morning as I moved the bags back into the garage again, the inevitable happened. One of the bags split as I picked it up and crystal litter cascaded over the lawn. I managed to sweep up some of it with a dustpan and brush, but there was still quite a bit left on (and in) the lawn.
Now, I'm not the world's most fastidious gardener. I don't have the time and I don't have the inclination. But even I draw the line at a lawn festooned with litter. What to do about it, though?
Crystal litter is great in many ways, but it's the very devil for getting underfoot. So much so that I bought a special litter-only vacuum cleaner that I station where the litterbox is. We call it the Poover. It's only a $30 job from Target, but because it plugs in it has more litter-sucking power than my expensive cordless. If I put the crevice tool on the cordless, however, it's more than up to the job. And if it works in the house, why not outside?
And it did. It obligingly sucked up all the spilt litter and returned my lawn to its usual ramshackle, but at least not crystal-infested, state. I only hope the neighbours didn't see me vacuuming the grass.
