Sinkholes, culverts, bobcats, gardens & way too short of weekends

Last summer, we had a smattering of woe when we had a few rains that were really heavy for short burst of maybe 10 minutes or so.  Not only did we have ruts in the driveway that the boys could have played "Grand Canyon" with using Matchbox cars, we developed a a good sized sink hole about 10' off the driveway where it crosses over the creek.

Needless to say, it got considerably bigger thru the remaining Fall, Winter and finally, Spring rains.

I called a three fellas about fixing it and only one showed up.  He said he would give me a bid and I never heard from him again. 

Another told me to throw some bags of top soil in there and forget about it.  I chose to forget about his company now and in the future instead.  

The other dude never bothered to respond to the message I left.

That was last Fall and the reason that it waited until now to fix it.  

This is the original hole that appeared last September.  You can barely see the culvert in the upper right corner of the pic, but notice also the ground cracking on the left side of the hole.  That had caved in plus some more on all other sides. Not cool...

Obviously the fella I hired working on it.  He dug towards the creek and a bit back towards the driveway, hitting solid dirt all the way down.  That was good news.

That black fabric is covering up three layers of a heavy plastic.  There was a small gap where the two pieces of culvert fit together and it was creating suction thru the hole during really heavy rains and eventually pulled a LOT of dirt down thru the culvert. Anti-awesomeness!

Self explanatory...  I think.

He dug out a trench in the creek itself as the water was no longer aimed at the opening of the culvert.  He also dug about 1' of dirt out on the right side of the culvert for a reason we'll see in a bit.

And here we are.  He brought in a huge load of broken up concrete to rip-wrap the area around the culvert which should help prevent more dirt wash-out, or at least, slow it way down.

And, since we were supposed to get a whole pile of rain, I wanted to get the area raked, seeded and covered in grass clippings before it started.  I would not have finished it had it not been for the help of fine neighbors!  Much gratitude and thanks to them!

And since the sinkhole was fixed, we had new rock put on the driveway as well.  That's Robby about halfway up posing, although you can't really tell at this size.

While all of that driveway fixin' was going on, I was out in the gardens trying to build a trellis for cucumbers or other vine based plants to grow on.  It failed and we had to come up with an alternative plan.  The plan was what you see on the right-most garden. I put the fencing up one side of the supports, looped it over and back down the other side. It's not bad but it's not even close to what we were attempting to do. It'll all be okay if we get piles and piles of cucumbers for me to consume at will.

And while the driveway fixin' and trellis screwing up'in was going on, the boys had a good, but short, time running thru the sprinkler.  Here's a wet Caleb who was not afraid to play in sand after being soaked. 

And another weekend was gone before I knew it...