swampland

Before the snow, we'd had two straight days of heavy rain. North Georgia has been suffering from drought for the past few years, but at the moment things are doing okay. The morning of the snowstorm, they were even more okay in our yard - we had a little lake action going.



The bright green "grass" at the left of the photo is mostly the foliage of star of Bethlehem flowers (which as of now are just beginning to flower). In the center there was standing water, as you can see in the next picture, where Evelyn is running and splashing her way across the yard.



The areas with standing water are clearly seasonally so; there isn't much grass growing in them. In general I have been pleasantly surprised by the soil quality in the back yard - it is brown and soil-like to a spade's depth (not red clay, as is the standard in this region). I guess since it is low-lying, silt washes in. Our neighbor reports that he used to salvage plants and throw them in his backyard when he was working as a landscaper, and everything grew like crazy. A good sign.

I don't think we're likely to do anything about drainage; I don;t know anything about it but it's probably expensive. A week after the snow - which melted rather slowly all week long - those swampy areas were fairly dry - no wet shoes from this past weekend's work clearing brush and planting peas (on which more soon!)