Up here in Pretoria we’ve had our first serious rains. Yay for the plants – the coriander shot up like mad in the past two weeks – and yay for washing away all the awful August dust. But alas not so yay, for our back garden. 
Our backyard is the drainage point for a catchment area of about 2500 m2. Being situated on a slope with both our east and north neighbours being on higher ground that us makes our backyard the path of least resistance. So we end of with a veritable river of rainwater running between the house and the outbuildings and it carries all the topsoil straight into the garage. Not great for my garden, not great for my carpets – dog paws and mud /0\!! – not an ideal situation at all. I have more than once almost bought some real estate on the way to the car as it leaves a thin layer of super slippery mud in the garage, with the bulk of it deposited right outside the dog room’s door.
The big idea is to eventually catch all that water, store it in underground tanks and use it for watering the garden and filling the ‘one day’ pool, but as that will involve quite a bit of planning, engineering and building it still remains on the wrong side of the budget for now.
So I need to come up with a solution that will stem the flow of water, that won’t cost an arm and a leg and that must be easily removable for when the ship comes in and we can pop those JoJo’s underground. I have consulted Google and it comes up with a whole load of concrete solutions. I am not a fan of those – money and too permanent. Could not for the life of me remember what you call ‘wire cages with rocks inside’ but luckily the google internet machine knew what I meant and spat out pages of results for gabions. So for now I think that is the cheapest and best plan. I am getting some useful information from Veld & Flora, the journal of the Botanical Society of South Africa. And it seems like Green By Nature has a whole course on DIY gardening. For the rest I will make it up as I go, luckily I have a pretty handy father, who has built river mats and the like, just a phone call away so will very definitely consult him before I I start shopping.
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