In the garden, and RAIN!!!!
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Thursday, December 25, 2025 04:27
VIEWED: 1005090
PAGE 276 of 1154
GREAT WORK JACK!
I think I figured out what's going on with your surface water ... it's not a high water table (ground water) because that implies some kind of permanence. I think what you have is subsurface flow of surface water through your property, whenever there's a surface water source uphill of you.
I see that A LOT both within my yard and in the neighborhood. My lot generally has a steep north to south slope, and a much gentler east to west slope, so that the highest point is the NE and the lowest is the SW. The front of my house faces north, uphill. Whenever I water the trees on the northwest in the front yard I get a water seep on the west side yard downhill from it. If I do EXTRA watering, the coast live oak even further downhill on the west side yard sprouts extra-long new shoots.
I even have a funny story. As you might remember, my house is now quite old - even (sadly) a city historic house (with a crap-ton of restrictions and the official city interest that comes with it). And though you're not supposed to discuss a lady's age, she's 112 this year. Anyway, back when I bought it, it still had all the original plumbing, including a hose bibb in the rear that suddenly broke and was almost leaking a steady stream. But there were a lot of various ongoing medical emergencies over time, and I just didn't have the opportunity to deal with it. So I got a really short hose and attached it to the hose bibb, and put on a nozzle that I could at least shut off - mostly. It had a really, really slow drip - maybe 2 (or 3 maximum) drips a minute. Crisis - not solved but at least addressed!
A few months later, my back-door neighbor from across the alley south of me and one lot west - which is downhill in two directions - asked me if I had a water leak in my yard - because he was having a seep coming up in his!
And I sort of got alerted to this because years ago I had asked an arborist why my big trees were doing OK even though I didn't water them (dry, dry, dry sunny SoCal was a mystery to me), and she said it was because the people upslope from me were watering their lawns too much.
So, yeah, subsurface surface-water flow - it happens!
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Hey Brenda
As you know, I am hearing impaired. And yet ... even though I TRY to remember!, when dealing with relatives who I know are also hearing impaired - I STILL will walk away while talking to them, or try talking from another room, about half the time. It is SUCH a bad habit! And they - do the same to me!
Your boss and her husband - I don't know if they're even trying, or just blitheringly oblivious to others. I'm just saying they may need to be reminded.
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Sigh. "The Blob" of extreme ocean heat off the west coast looks like it's back.
https://news.mongabay.com/2019/09/the-blob-is-back-pacific-heat-wave-a
lready-second-largest-in-recent-history/
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I think I may have some insight into 2 medical items:
empty nose syndrome - caused by TOO smooth and laminar an air flow in the nasal cavity, leading to the feeling you can't breathe. One depends on subtle feedback of air impinging on turbinates to sense airflow, and cognate that air is moving in and out.
active avoidance of interaction by a subset of autistics - If you look at eye tracking by one set of autistics, their gaze scans a scene entirely at random, neither lingering on nor avoiding human faces - sometimes looking at a door knob, a tabletop, a human face. If you look at eye tracking by another set of autistics, their gaze actively avoids impinging on a human face. I suspect this second set is not incapable of (is capable of) human interaction, but doesn't receive an oxytocin boost from it, so that it's more stressful than pleasant. And in addition, they have a lower ability to self-soothe social unpleasantness (they can't generate their own internal boost of oxytocin). And so they actively avoid social interaction, and are in fact distressed by any attempt to engage in it.
FWIW I also believe there's a particular brain region that marshals a particular set of responses to human faces specifically, that is one of the underlying reasons why responses to human faces specifically are such a distinguishing feature of autism.
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Hey Brenda
As you know, I am hearing impaired. And yet ... even though I TRY to remember!, when dealing with relatives who I know are also hearing impaired - I STILL will walk away while talking to them, or try talking from another room, about half the time. It is SUCH a bad habit! And they - do the same to me!
Your boss and her husband - I don't know if they're even trying, or just blitheringly oblivious to others. I'm just saying they may need to be reminded.
Hi Kiki,
I do sort of know they have some problems with their hearing as they are in their 70s and I try not to talk to them while walking out of a room and stuff.
To me, they are not trying and are just oblivious to anything outside of their own spheres. As I said yesterday was the 3rd time that I have told her about this and asked her not to do that. And I am sick of doing that. So if they get a "what?" thrown back at them then that is there fault. Impolite or not. I deserve some respect.
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Bad day today. Lost at the casino and on top of that I couldn't find any lamb chops for my birthday on Sunday. Have one more place to look tomorrow after I get my laundry done. And I am hoping.
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Hey Brenda
As you know, I am hearing impaired. And yet ... even though I TRY to remember!, when dealing with relatives who I know are also hearing impaired - I STILL will walk away while talking to them, or try talking from another room, about half the time. It is SUCH a bad habit! And they - do the same to me!
Your boss and her husband - I don't know if they're even trying, or just blitheringly oblivious to others. I'm just saying they may need to be reminded.
Quote:I hear ya' on that! HA HA! And from personal experience, I know how irritating it is when someone does that. It seems so - inconsiderate is the nicest word. But I also know that even with my personal experience and my good intentions, I have failed to eradicate the habit in myself!
Originally posted by Brenda:
Hi Kiki,
I do sort of know they have some problems with their hearing as they are in their 70s and I try not to talk to them while walking out of a room and stuff.
To me, they are not trying and are just oblivious to anything outside of their own spheres. As I said yesterday was the 3rd time that I have told her about this and asked her not to do that. And I am sick of doing that. So if they get a "what?" thrown back at them then that is there fault. Impolite or not. I deserve some respect.
A "what?" does seem perfectly appropriate, and not at all impolite, however!
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Finally - it was unusually cloudy today, but that made me realize just HOW dim it is a 5PM compared to only a few weeks ago! The days are definitely shorter!
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
GREAT WORK JACK!
I think I figured out what's going on with your surface water ... it's not a high water table (ground water) because that implies some kind of permanence. I think what you have is subsurface flow of surface water through your property, whenever there's a surface water source uphill of you.
I see that A LOT both within my yard and in the neighborhood. My lot generally has a steep north to south slope, and a much gentler east to west slope, so that the highest point is the NE and the lowest is the SW. The front of my house faces north, uphill. Whenever I water the trees on the northwest in the front yard I get a water seep on the west side yard downhill from it. If I do EXTRA watering, the coast live oak even further downhill on the west side yard sprouts extra-long new shoots.
I even have a funny story. As you might remember, my house is now quite old - even (sadly) a city historic house (with a crap-ton of restrictions and the official city interest that comes with it). And though you're not supposed to discuss a lady's age, she's 112 this year. Anyway, back when I bought it, it still had all the original plumbing, including a hose bibb in the rear that suddenly broke and was almost leaking a steady stream. But there were a lot of various ongoing medical emergencies over time, and I just didn't have the opportunity to deal with it. So I got a really short hose and attached it to the hose bibb, and put on a nozzle that I could at least shut off - mostly. It had a really, really slow drip - maybe 2 (or 3 maximum) drips a minute. Crisis - not solved but at least addressed!
A few months later, my back-door neighbor from across the alley south of me and one lot west - which is downhill in two directions - asked me if I had a water leak in my yard - because he was having a seep coming up in his!
And I sort of got alerted to this because years ago I had asked an arborist why my big trees were doing OK even though I didn't water them (dry, dry, dry sunny SoCal was a mystery to me), and she said it was because the people upslope from me were watering their lawns too much.
So, yeah, subsurface surface-water flow - it happens!
Hmmmmm... maybe you're right about that.
I don't think anybody waters anything around here. Haven't had any need to the last 5 years, anyhow. But you might be right about the surface water thing. The "main drag" that turns into my street is above the ditch to the point that there's a bridge over it before you turn. Then as you go toward my house, there's a huge dip in the road. Like I said before, without actually measuring by anything but my eyes, the ditch across the street from me is 6 feet higher than the floor on my 1st floor. I'd say the main drag is probably at least 10 or 12 feet elevated from my lawn, and it gets even worse behind me.
There might not really be much I can do if that's the case. The water getting in my crawl is coming in through the french drain into the sump well and then pushed out into the street. Even if I had gutters pushing rain from my roof away from the house, it would still be coming downhill to me and up against the front of my house regardless. Gutters on the back might protect the back of the house successfully though. That's where the living space is, so at least there's that.
Got the plywood and more screws and nails than I'll probably ever use to finish this job. I'm done messing around with tiny boxes and wasting money. If I have leftovers, so be it. I'm sure I'll find something else to use most of them on before I'm done here.
Didn't do anything after that but monitor the walls from time to time during the all day thunderstorms we've had for the last 8 or so hours. Louvers still not leaking a drop into the house like I suspected they wouldn't during even a hard rainfall, so it must have come from the snowdrifts and melting when it's
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Jack, I'm not suggesting it! But I think one might be able to divert the subsurface flow by putting in culverts or drywells plus outflows to direct it around the house.
Again - I'm not suggesting it! I just have an annoying impulse to pursue topics as far as I can, to see where they end up.
But I want to say again -
GREAT WORK JACK !!! I hope you're pleased with how it's all looking so far!
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