If you have been reading my recent posts, you should be aware that I have been talking about my exploits and experiences after being assigned to the JITC at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. Today, my story centers around a subject that I have written about a few times in the past. However, it’s not about the Ford Tempo from hell, which I have been talking about a lot recently. It is also not about the new house that I had built in Sierra Vista, although it is related to that house. When my wife and I originally purchased an acre of land upon which to build a house, we had a vision for that acre of land. As a result, when we designed the house, we designed it with multiple points of exit from the house. There was one point of exit through the front door. That was number one. Then, there was another point of exit out the side through the garage to the RV driveway and the garden. That was exit number two. Next, there was a sliding glass door which served as an exit from the family room out onto the patio deck and the backyard. That was exit number three. Number four, there was a single door exit from the Arizona room out onto the patio deck and the backyard. That was exit number four. But I’m still not done. Finally, we designed an exit from the master bathroom out to the side yard in the opposite direction of the RV drive and the garden. That exit would ultimately take us to where we envisioned our pool would be. No. We did not have a pool. We only envisioned that someday we would have a pool. We envisioned that the pool would be on the west side of the house. That was our vision. However, construction has a funny way of screwing up your vision. First, we didn’t realize that Mesquite trees were really just weeds. You see, the problem with Mesquite trees is that you can’t just tear them out and think that is the end of it. Oh no. It ain’t. Cuz, let me tell you, let three or four drops of rain fall upon the spot where those bastards once grew and those bastards will go right back just like weeds. The problem is that you have to kill the whole damn taproot. And the taproot for a Mesquite tree can go straight down for days. The only real way to get rid of those Mesquite tree weeds is to dig them out with a John Deere 410 backhoe or similar machine. I hired a guy with a backhoe to come in and dig out the Mesquite trees in my backyard, but that didn’t fix all of my problems. Construction had created a drainage issue with the backyard. When I say that construction created a drainage issue, that is really understatement. The monsoon rains were really heavy that first year right after we moved into the house. Remember how I told you that we didn’t have a swimming pool. Remember how I told you that the swimming pool was just our vision. Remember how I told you that we envisioned the swimming pool being on the west side of the house. Well, it seems like the monsoon rains were trying to help that whole process along. Cuz every time the monsoon rains came, the west side of the yard flooded right beside the west side of the house. The rain was 8 to 10 inches deep in that area of the backyard due to lack of drainage. The rainwater came up right to the bottom edge of that backdoor that we had put in to exit from the master bathroom. The first time the backyard flooded, I figured out why. You know. Brick fences are really good as perimeter fences around a yard out in the boonies. Why? Well, Jake can’t climb brick walls. Neither can coyotes. The only problem is water can’t climb brick fences either. There was nowhere for the water to escape. In other words, the rainwater was dammed up by the brick fence that we had built as a perimeter around our backyard. That presented a problem, cuz there was no way for the water to escape through the brick fence. I quickly remedied that problem. I bored a 2 x 2 inch hole in the fence at ground level to allow the water to escape. In the front yard, on the other side of the fence from where I bored that hole, I dug a little trench down and away toward the road from the fence. Next, I had the guy with the backhoe use a blade attached to the front-end of his tractor to level the backyard and taper it for proper drainage. Finally, I asked him to attach a drag to the back of his tractor to drag the backyard to collect rocks into piles. From there, my kids and I raked the entire backyard to collect small rocks and pebbles and chunks of dirt into piles that we would then haul away. It took an entire week to haul away all of those piles of dirt and rocks and pebbles because there were ninety-four wheel barrel loads of that crap to haul away, but I got it done without any serious exercises in futility (for me, maybe not for the kids).
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