My Little Victory Garden: Entry Two

One week before a business down the road from our home opened, torrential rains came and took out their entire retaining wall. In three days, however, the mess was cleaned up and crews worked around the clock to rebuild the wall and the structures it had pulled down. Now restored, the first business is OPEN.

The majority of Oklahoma experienced a sustaining drought throughout last fall and on through Winter 2010-11. No rain. Zero. When this kind of thing happens in the winter, it’s not quite as noticeable as it is when green things are growing. However the situation was pretty bad: until just a few days ago fire warnings had been published, all our snow had only amounted to mere tenths of an inch once melted and the winter wheat was really suffering.

Then last week the rain came. In torrents. Although our whole state didn’t get moisture, a good deal did and that “good deal” included My Little Victory Garden. Two days after Mick had plowed up the beautiful soil into a soft loam for planting, the rain came with a vengeance. My yard still has “wavy grass” reminders, my garden was flooded and the aftermath is a now uneven, cracked plot with sand in it. Why sand? The rain was so hard it found a weak, lower area in our neighbors yard and drilled down behind our retaining wall, oozing out the native sandy loam through the cracks. But that wasn’t the worst damage. My garden got off easy.

Did you get a big rain? Did your yard look like this once the water subsided?

Here's the sink hole that became the portal to cover my garden in sand.

You can see how the rains shoved the dirt through any crack the water could find.

And, here's the resulting "crack-age" from such a load of water so quickly after the tilling phase.

No, the worst damage happened one mile from my home. A newly completed retaining wall, holding back mounds of earth bordering a new business parking lot collapsed. Completely. I felt sorry for the business owner, but luckily they were not planning on opening the first store for another week; I’m glad it happened before business began. That kind of collapse could have meant danger for someone had they been around.

So, the rain was a bit of a mixed blessing. I’ll need to reorganize the dirt in the bed once the seeds are up so water coverage will distribute evenly. However, I can’t tell exactly where all my planting rows are so I’ll need to wait a bit. There are signs of life, however, even after just one week. Here’s the report…