130th Consecutive Parade

The Beech Parade took place on about the nicest July 4th we can remember - it's breezy and just slightly cool for a change.

I got this photo of our neighbors' four grandchildren while we were waiting for the parade to begin. I was told it is difficult to get them together in a group like this so I took several shots hoping one of them would get everyone's eyes open - I thought this one came out particularly well.

It wasn't long after that that the parade started as usual with the banner marking the longevity of the tradition.

Visible in the background of that banner shot, the tradition we thought we knew changed this year and the RCFD did not bring up the rear of the procession.  But that's getting ahead of the story - first we have the now traditional Veterans' Float - they really made a festive sight with all the flags!

 

The old Engine came next.,,,

 

... followed by the Parade Marshall and guest speaker at the program, Jay Raybuck with his wife Susie. They are neighbors in our development and Jay has been serving as interim minister of the Reems Creek Beech Presbyterian Church for some time. 

 

Norris came by with the larger contingent from the RCFD, driving the big tanker.

 

In a surprise twist, he whipped out his phone for a photo of your photographer who is always behind the camera.

There are always elements in the parade we haven't seen before - I think this year's biggest new float was a boat.

 

Then we have a well-decked-out golf cart.

Lady Liberty and Uncle Sam - we'll catch up with them later.

It looked like the youth in their ATVs have been drilling to move in formation.

Then we have the usual decorated bicycles - this young man has creative face paint as well.

We missed the equestrian contingent - but I didn't realize until I was looking at my photos that there was a baby goat in the parade.  I suspect it was either not cooperating with the idea of marching, or it was just tired out by the time it had come at least a half mile from the staging area on Roberts Cove all the way to the church on Sugar Cove Road.

We marveled at the skill of this young man with his two-wheeled skateboard.

I just looked it up - they are called "waveboards."

I think the youngest human in the parade was in this vehicle.

But these next two were pretty young and self-propelled.

I liked this group of bicycles -

They were all outfitted with these tin cans that add a festive note to the procession.

Another group of participants that we have not seen in the parade since we've been going were these beautiful tractors. This tractor has a sign telling us it is a Ford and dates to 1953.

it pulled this little trailer equipped with an ice cream making device from 1927. Some in the crowd liked the noise it made when the farmer fired it up after the parade - they said it reminded them of the moonshine stills. 

Next we have a 1947 Ford and a 1936 John Deere.

And finally, a 1950 Farmall Cub.

MAMA made its usual grand entrance on the ballfield at the community center after the parade was finished. It was different for me this time - I came with Gary and Judi. We're looking at the backs of their heads in this photo.

It was fun to see the dramatic arrival of MAMA through their eyes.

Here are the beautiful Lady Liberty and fine Uncle Sam where we can really admire their garb.

Our neighbor's grandson got a turn at driving this tractor.

Not really - his feet might have been able to reach the pedals, but the engine wasn't running.  

His big sister meanwhile was trying to walk on stilts. Even with assistance it was a struggle to get her balance, but I got her when she was looking up and actually moving.

This final look at the fire vehicles as the program was starting in the community center about wraps up the 130th Beech Parade ...

... except that since Judi and Gary decided to stay for the music, Norris gave me a ride back to the entrance to our development in the tanker - my first time on the inside of a fire truck!

It was not a comfortable ride - I was just as happy to walk the last part of my trip home.

Drainage overhaul - part 3

For this final installment, we move under the deck.  During the deluge, the retention pond, with the drain blocked by rocks and forest debris, filled up and overflowed. This being a mountain, the water continued to flow long after the rain stopped, which is when Norris and Cheryl were unclogging the drain and removing the dam from under the bridge. The overflow outlet functioned as designed; however, the amount of water that obeyed the Law of Gravity and flowed along that route did some serious erosion damage under the deck -

 

The rhubarb in the foreground formerly sat on a smooth bed of mulch, and those gutter drain tubes were both well buried.

The destructive power of the water continued down to the stepping stones that connect the front door to the curved sets of stairs that lead down and across the property to the driveway. This photo does not adequately show the scale of the landslide, but it's the best we have - 

There's not much dirt under the front corner of that large slab of rock, and the top wood step is suspended over the edge of the hole. More erosion took away any soil and rock that was not held by those clethra visible on the left.

The solution was first of all to locate the large drain pipe that comes out of the large concrete drain now surrounded by the retention pond.  That was a lot more work than any of us imagined. When we went through all our house construction photos, we discovered that the drain had been installed just after the foundation was poured, before the kitchen was framed. There was so much more activity  after that, we did not realize how deep the crew would have to dig to find that pipe.

 

Here's another shot of that hole, in case you can't see the black pipe.

 

The above photos were taken on May 18th. Digging continued to create channels for new connecting underground drainage pipes, shown here on the 25th. All the digging was done by hand. (The cracked drain to the right was replaced).

We can't remember what the size of that pipe is, but here's a photo of the same-size new section waiting to be buried.

This photo was taken from the deck looking down as the landscaping crew got ready for the installation of a new "y" pipe.

In sequence:

 

They had pleasant weather for this job. Meanwhile, the wildflower meadow's dead remains were mowed down and carted away.  Just standing on that slope is hard work, but the young man is not resting, he's trying to repair the trimmer.

New wildflower seeds -- just three varieties of flowers -- will be scattered over this slope in another week. We hope having a limited variety of desired plants will help us to identify and control the weeds.  (This may be a hopeless undertaking for us.)

This next series of photos was taken after the mulching was completed. This slab covers the open end of that huge pipe. The whole trench is lined in rock.

This is the area that has the new "y" pipe installation. The mulch blowers also covered up a good part of the stone path.

Here's another before shot of that area of washout under the deck taken back in April just after the rain -

 And here it is after the mulching this week. Norris had to go back out with the leaf blower to get all that mulch off the rhubarb leaves. The mulch was not supposed to cover up all the new river rock lining the trench, but we have no fear that it will wash out should we have another overflow problem like this one.

This photo shows the yard where the drainage pipes from the downspouts and that big drain we have just been looking at all come out. We have some iris and day lilies planted around the openings so they aren't gaping holes in the landscape.

 

The same area viewed from above.

 We hope that's it for drainage remediations.

Drainage Overhaul - part 2

We're sure our readers can hardly wait to see these next installments....  Really, posts like this are mostly for us, so we can remember when and why we made landscape changes.

Moving closer to the waterfall after yesterday's post, here's what the area right off the opposite back corner looked like in April.

The stone bridge and dry-retaining pond were installed in April, 2013.  This year's deluge brought a lot of leaves and tree debris down that got stuck under the slab. You can see some bare spots in the "stream bed." Many of the smaller river rocks were dislodged and carried down the slope.

 The morning after the rain, we woke up to find the pond overflowing. The grate, seen in the above picture, was clogged with leaves and twigs but as Norris stood knee deep in the water trying to clear it, he found it was also being blocked by some of the river rock that had washed down.

Two members of the landscaping crew moved all the river rock (not the large boulders) out of both the stream bed and the retaining pond. It took them only two days to sort and replace all that rock by hand, working to better position the smaller rocks so they would be less likely to come riding down.

 

You can also see that the stone bridge has been raised, with more rocks holding it up, while the bed underneath it was dug out a little lower, which we hope will help prevent the logjam that Cheryl worked out while Norris was unplugging the grate. 

The grate used to be covered with the stone slab that now serves as a pedestrian bridge, but that arrangement got clogged up with the big rains of early 2013 (documented in January and February posts last year.)  Now the grate has been completely removed and a new slab, higher than the old one, was positioned to keep us from falling in to the deep drain.

Saving the most dramatic dirt-moving project for our next post, we also had a relatively small improvment made on one side of the driveway where we have always had a wet-weather spring that drained for days after a major rainfall.

There is no before shot - it was just mulch in this area where the stone steps lead you to the base of the property.

Now we have river rock and a bit of drainage pipe under the last step, leading down to the culvert under the driveway that connects to a major one taking all the drainage under the road.

It has not rained in any appreciable amount since this was installed so we don't know if it will work to keep that post-rain flow off the driveway.

Drainage overhaul - part 1

We discussed issues with our landscape on April 29th after a deluge (see a photo of the water fall in our backyard in the post) swept down the mountainside and through our existing systems.  We've just about finished some upgrades to the drainage that we can post about - too many photos so we'll spread this out over a couple of days.

We'll start with the back yard area as that was the problem we contacted the landscaper about even before the flooding this spring.  We had had a minor leak in the back corner where the garage doors are, possibly caused by a malfunction in our rainbarrel overflow system.  You can see that corner in this photo, from our July 12, 2012 post.

Whatever the rainbarrels did, the real problems was the back fill around the foundation had settled, leaving a negative water flow along that wing of the house.  We hired our landscaper to move all the gorgeous ferns and bring in fresh dirt.  He knew that would require a lot of dirt so he brought in some big equipment for the heavy lifting  -

 - and some new hires to take it from there -

Another photo taken the same day -

that shows the new artificial swale that goes from the forground to the distance to help with the soggy area we have always had in back of the kitchen (about where the photographer is standing.) This was the first day on the job for several of the young men, summer hires who play baseball in college. But the work beat them up - one of them had to take the next day off.

While they were digging the swale, they cut into our existing drainage, so they replaced it with more rigid PVC, photographed here through the dining room window.

Apparently we neglected to get a photo of the swale after it was installed, before the mulch went in, but it was completely lined with river rock, which will no doubt be visible after our first major rain event. But here's the new drainage system today.

 

You can see the repositioned rain barrels and that most of the ferns are making a comeback. We may have lost three of them, but their planting area is smaller. We think a couple that are too close to the generator can fill in the gaps.