On a quiet Monday afternoon, with silence only broken once every four or five minutes when another human (with or without a canine) would walk past the house (barkbarkbark!), I started cleaning the craft/guest room. I'm going slowly, right now focusing on the mountain of laundry that was piled on the bed, so I can dismantle the disappointing daybed before the new bedframe arrives later in the week. I worked a few minutes past the point of needing an extended rest, but I pushed on just long enough to refill my water glass before taking a break. At least, that was my intent.
I glanced out of the kitchen window, and was very confused by what I saw. "G---?" I called to the Mr who was trying to take a nap in the cool basement, "Why is our backyard flooded?" I walked out to the edge of the patio, and looked the yard over. Fully 90% of it was under one to three inches of water. I listened to hear whether I could trace the source. No rogue water hose spraying to beat the band. Water pooled near the sprinkler controls, but nothing spraying from there. By then, the Mr had come out in a bathrobe and tromped barefoot out to the alley through the back gate. I tried to follow, but even in tall sandals, I wasn't going to walk through that water. I went out the front, and walked up the block to go to the alley entrance.
The good news is that we were not the source of the water. The dizzying numbers of dollar signs stopped whirring around my head, as I identified the water line break as behind a house several up from mine. I wasn't about to wade in to get too close, so I went back around to see whether the Mr had some updates for me.
It took the city a long time to show up and start fixing it. Several minutes into the crisis, 30 perhaps, Mr S-P used my phone to try 911, and they assured they had been notified of the flood already. While waiting for someone to show, he and a neighbor built a little diversion project, to try to lessen the amount still flowing into our yards. He was out there over an hour, in his bathrobe the entire time. Yep. We are the sophisticated ones on this block.
At bedtime now, the water has mostly soaked in. There's still a big puddle on the walk to the gate. I hope it drains by morning, so I can access the garden and pick the lettuce I intended to use for my lunch at Rotary. (I'm trying to be keto, so no catered sandwich for me.) I can still hear the city crew out there. We guess the bright side is we won't have to water the grass in the back yard for a couple weeks. Maybe where we seeded bare patches will finally grow stronger and thicker. I dread seeing how this benefits the squashes I didn't want to grow this season.
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