Ted (Dec 2010–June 2011)

Below are some recent photos of Ted aka Edward Alfred aka Sebastian, who died yesterday after being hit by a car. He will be sadly missed by us all.

Mud Begone; Or, Go Away From Our Garage*

Every time it rained—which is fairly frequently in the Dandenongs (or, "The Blue Dandenongs"(!) as it called on a local sign)—and for weeks afterward, we had mud all around and running through our car port. Like this:

[note how wet and be-mucked the slab is]

So, every time we needed to get any wood from the woodpile, or put rubbish in the bin, or get in or out of a car, we had to protect ourselves from the mud. Ted, not being so concerned about mud, simply walked it in and around of the house for us.

We have tried various methods to keep clear of the muck, pavers (large and small), bricks etc, but the ground takes forever to dry here and so the pavers and bricks eventually become covered in mud too. And then Ted started digging in the mud for us, creating pools that never dried out!

[One of Ted's pools, still full of water, two weeks after he dug it]

[from left to right: monster paver, small pavers, bricks (with a pile of extra pavers on top)]

[bricks, disappearing into the mud]

And so, we interrupted our other gardening plans to excavate a trench around the carport slab, and put in some ag-pipe. After reading up online about How to Dig Trenches, Installing a Land Drain etc, and buying 20 metres of ag-pipe, a few connectors, six bags of screenings (fine gravel) and three tonnes of scoria, we started digging. And digging. And digging.

[it is difficult to measure progress in mud-tone photos.
Trust me, this is a lot of work]

[And this is a lot more work]

Doing the above slaughtered us. It took a week to recover. I finished the job this weekend, by deepening the trench, angling it from the retaining wall towards the slab, and in a continuous gentle slope from the start (where Ted created his reflective pool) to the stone-lined drain that starts half way along the carport (see here and here). The start of the said stone-lined drain had to be lowered first, to allow enough drop for the water to drain.

[Left: angling trench; Centre: ag-pipe on a bed of, and covered in grey screenings; Right: covering said pipe and screenings in 20mm scoria]

One minor problem was that the slab was laid on bedrock, and the concrete was a hand-span wider than the slab in places, and the concrete supports for the posts almost joined the slab: this was a minor problem because when I wasn't bent double, shoveling sticky, heavy, stone-filled clay, mud and water out of the trench, I was cutting a path through concrete or bedrock with a four-pound hammer and a chisel.

Since I still can't make a first with my right hand I am not sure what price I have paid (measured in days of pain) for each meter of the trench, but it is at least one (four metres, four days today). But I suspect it will be worth it. The mud is gone, and the slab is dry. And, after two fairly heavy downpours, it is still dry, and the drain is working, carrying the water along the trench into our 70s stone drain.

[the monster paver which the wheelie-bin is on, was the base of the old incinerator]

[job done]

And now that the drainage is done and it works—and despite the monster effort M. and I put into this—I am left wondering why it wasn't done forty years ago, at the same time as the stone drain was constructed. Because it is pretty clear that for the last forty years this carport looked like the photo at top, not the one below, with all the grief that that entails.

*to the tune of "It Ain't Me Babe"