Midnight Mutterings | The water came up

||| MIDNIGHT MUTTERINGS by JACKIE BATES |||

Just like the weather forecast predicted, we were in for an extra high tide overnight and this morning when I looked out at the yard at Obstruction Pass, there it was, in the yard, and covering the garden, flooding even the highest bed which rarely retains water even in the worse storms.

When I bought this house more than thirty years ago, it was pretty much a wreck: roof leaking in living and bedroom and ceilings coming down. Single pane windows rotting around casings, small side porch listing, broken glass everywhere, and orange carpet covering every square inch except the bathroom, even the kitchen. Outside a berm separated the gravel beach from the yard with tall seagrass on top of the berm. The interior walls and ceiling were hospital green.

I looked around then and said the orange carpet has to go. Twenty years later it did and was replaced with pretty oak floor boards. Before that a steel roof replaced the roll roofing, a wonderful glass side porch replaced the old falling down porch and there were decks trimmed with driftwood across the water side of the house as well as a small deck leading to the new kitchen greenhouse porch that had an opening skylight and a clever louvered opening to add to the ventilation.

When I bought the house there was an elevated boardwalk from the concrete pad under an overhanging part of the house, which had clearly been an open porch when the cabin was built over a hundred years ago now. To get from the concrete pad under the house there were old growth elevated boards leading to the berm and the beach. That old boardwalk is still there with the same old growth fir boards. A friend turned them over last summer. They are a little frayed at the ends but otherwise still solid as only old growth wood lasts like that.

Today the water from the bay was ten inches deep in the yard, even though the tide was receding by the time I was walking the boards to the berm. Only once have I seen the boardwalk underwater. That was last winter and was a big surprise. In my early years here, the basement flooded, which meant I dried it out with a kayak pump and a five gallon bucket. A few times I included the basement next door with my pumping as the previous owners were about the age I am now and away for the winters.

I have concluded that basement flooding depends on high winds accompanying a very high tide which hasn’t happened in the last few years.

Years ago one winter, storms brought waves over the berm that paved my two yards to the east with driftwood. I chose what pieces I wanted to keep, and friends helped me escort the rest back to the beach.

You would think (and I did predict) that the salt water would adversely affect the little garden near the berm in my yard, but that has not been the case. The soil in the beds is the original soil with soil from the paths around the beds added. Nothing from the ‘outside’ added. Except limited grass clippings from the yard mowings, but that hasn’t happened in the last ten years.

I have compost piles and worm bins, but I’ve never moved any of that to the garden beds. The little beach garden has been neglected for the last two decades, but when I stick a start or two randomly in the beds, they flourish, even without added water. Usually, I cover the beds with burlap bags which keep the weeds down. However the previous year, I failed to do so and the beds were filled with kale volunteers that fed the neighbors and me with plenty of green leaves.

That’s about it beyond some chives from decades ago, which just can’t seem to help flourishing. Maybe next spring I’ll plant the beds and add to the potatoes that grow in the compost and the volunteer kale that comes up everywhere.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to get used to the early darkness and missing the neighbors who have moved away or died. Looks like a lonely winter ahead, but I think I’ll feel better when the water goes back where it belongs.