The Flood
In a previous post I mentioned the small inconvenience of having no septic and the fun experience of getting to carry buckets about with the…well you know, but no longer!! We finally had the time, supplies, ad tools to install a septic system! Grandpa Herman had bought a backhoe a while ago and has been working on it ever since. After quite a bit of work and time he finally got it ready to rock and roll. Jaken, with the expertise of his dad, purchased a small make shift septic tank and all the pipes and things needed for it. Then came the day to put that bad boy in!
The guys gathered on the side of the house where it would be put in and got the area prepped. Grandpa expertly tucked the backhoe into the small space and started digging.
He got a whole large enough dug and cleared out some of the trees for the piping to go out towards the garden area. Jeremy got in the hole and got the pipes laid where they would be connecting to the tank.
Once the tank was brought over into the hole they connected the pipes to it and started filling it with water. Grandpa got busy digging some stumps that were around the yard and removing a few trees that were dying or dropping limbs frequently.
Once the tank was sufficiently filled with water and the hole around it filled in as much as it could we could finally flush the toilet and revel in the luxury it now afforded us. We’ve only been out here a few months but having the option to flush toilet paper is something I had not taken for granted. We were really doing good now. We made it a week before the unthinkable.
The weather in our area of Texas has been essentially a drought for a couple months. We have had to water the garden twice a day just to keep the plants alive. At once point I truly thought the garden wasn’t going to make it. The ground was so dry that even attempting to mow started a dust storm. The grass everywhere was just brown and sad. Trees were drying out so bad the limbs had been crashing down all over the yard. Then one day the rain came. And it hasn’t stopped since.
It has been raining every single day for two week straight at least. At first we were joyous because that meant the land could revitalize a bit and the green would return. The garden certainly appreciated it and all of our pumpkins began to double in size and flourish. The grass returned to green and trees could breathe again. Till the ones who had already died from the drought dropped even more limbs. The rain pattering on the tin roof top became such a welcome sound and we relaxed for a minute, but only a minute.
Back to the present post septic installation. A week of blissful toilet flushes and no more buckets. We decided to pop over to town to do some shopping and grab dinner. The weather looked a little bleak but nothing crazy or unusual. Several hours later we return home around 9:30 PM and notice all the ditches are overflowing. We talk to Grandpa Herman and he confirms it had rained a torrential downpour. We hope everything at the house is okay, its about two feet off the ground so the inside should be fine. Then we get home and see the damage.
Sure the house was fine but the ground on the side where the brand new septic system is tucked away is flooded. We get the flash lights and peer around and see the new tank is completely crushed and the hole around it totally caved in. We aren’t sure if the water around it is rain or the contents that were inside. This is completely heart-wrenching as we can’t even use the bucket method now because of how the new pipes are connected. It’s too late at night to do anything about it so we have to wait till daylight. We go to bed with this new challenge to deal with when we can.