These past few weeks I’ve been working hard in the front garden, removing the grass from the funny shaped areas shown in this photo taken from the roof. I defined these areas a couple of years ago and just let them go wild. My idea is to have meadow areas with perennial flowers and I was slowly adding plants. It became obvious that the grass was going to out-compete most other plants and so I decided to remove it before planting more seriously.

The house in Garden Bay has a septic system circa 1992. No plan of the drainage field was ever filed but I knew it was out front, and I knew the location of the septic tank and distribution box. A few days ago I noticed the soil around the D-box was very wet and decided to investigate. After removing the soil a puddle formed. Not good. So I called the pumper service and they concluded that two of the three drainage lines were blocked.

These past two days have been spent investigating and worrying about what to do. It will be an expensive repair and will be a major disruption to the front yard and garden. Today the owner of the septic company came to access the situation to then generate a quote. Fortunately he was sympathetic to my concerns and gave me a good feeling about the installation of a new leach field.

more to come as the project progresses …