Visit to RV and Uncovering Drainage Ditch

February 1, 2025

This morning, Nox and I went to the RV. Nox was happy to be back at the RV. She hopped up onto the couch after I put her blanket down.

I plugged the water hose in and kept my fingers crossed that we didn’t have any problems after the bitter cold (8 degrees F).

Well, water started gushing from the low drain point. Ah, I recalled Bruce saying he had opened it.

I didn’t have the faintest notion how to close the low drain point. I looked underneath the RV. I didn’t see a valve to close it.

Fortunately, Bruce responded right away to my text by calling me. He walked me through closing the low drain point.

I turned on the water heater after clearing the water lines of air.

Everything seemed good. I spent sometime cleaning the shower.

Once I was done with that, I disconnected the water hose, put it away, loaded Nox into the truck and headed home.

After I got home, I felt like doing something outside. The weather was sunny and cool, a perfect day to do some yard work.

Since Bruce had been concerned about the water pouring out of the drain pipe, I decided to clear the drainage ditch.

I could tell a ditch had been dug and lined with concrete in the past.

I started to dig, then remembered, before and after pictures.

I didn’t finish clearing the drainage ditch, but I made good progress. To remove the dirt, I put a five gallon bucket and my smaller bucket into my wagon. I shoveled the dirt into the buckets.

My wagon allowed me to easily move the dirt. I used the dirt, that beautiful loomy black dirt, to fill holes. We have so many holes around the yard. The holes appear to be where tree stumps rotted away.

The dirt was full of large and small earthworms and smallish grubs. The earthworms, I was happy about, the grubs, I wasn’t happy about. I hope the birds find all the grubs I tossed on top of the ground.

Most of the dirt on Blackberry Homestead is red clay. It makes sense that the drainage ditch was full of lovely soil. Who knows how long tree leaves had been filling up the ditch and rotting? The dirt was five to six inches deep in the middle of the ditch.

After I got tired of digging, (two hours was plenty) I mixed coco core with some of the cow manure compost (from our next door neighbor) in an old feed trough. I am going to reuse the trough as a herb garden.

I went inside and got washed up. Nox had been wondering around while I did inexplicable things. She followed me inside.

I had something to eat and Bruce called. See my previous post.

I went back outside to put away the shovel and wagon. As I was going back inside, I noticed the moon and Venus above the house.

I walked around front and took some more pictures.

I decided to tackle repotting the plants from my mom’s funeral. It was a bigger and messier job that I thought it would be.

It was a busy day.