The Crap in our Yard

This weekend we're celebrating the 4th of July by hauling more topsoil into the back yard. Before we do that, we needed to bury the drain pipe from our downspout. You may recall that in the digging of the footers for the deck (the wrong holes) they cut through our downspout drain pipe.

We got a late start, having to go to Lowes for more drainage rock, more lumber, more grass seed, and more other things. We grilled Salmon patties (interesting... in a strange sort of way), then dragged all the materials into the back yard and started digging.

First off, we aren't entirely sure where the old pipe was going. It appeared to follow the gate line, but then got too close the one of the poles so we said screw that and cut through it to dig away from the gateline. Apparently it had been clogged with mung for a while, and some very nasty stuff came out of it.

We started digging toward the back of the yard. The smell of sewage keeps getting worse and worse. All of our sewer lines go through the front of the house, so we have no earthly clue as to why it would smell this bad back here, unless it is because that area is always so wet that anything in the ground is just festering yuck.

We found, what appears to be, half of a skull of something. Perhaps Jimmy Hoffa, we aren't sure, nor do we really want to know. We found a long metal solid bar... no idea what that's from. We found more stinky sewage gunk. The more we dug, the stinkier it got. It's downright nasty. I now understand why the dogs loved to dig in this area. It's stinky, it's nasty, and that's what they like to eat and roll in.

We conveniently found two of the concrete hole fillers that the deck people left in the holes when they buried them to dig the new holes. Those are fun to break through.

Around 9pm, we said screw it and quit. We erected the plastic gate barrier around the nasty gunk pile so that the dogs wouldn't get into it. I'm not about to try to wash that out of their thick multi layer fur.

Tomorrow we'll continue with the stench-fest, put the drain pipe in the hole, pour water into it to make sure it drains correctly, then cover it up. We plan on laying more fill dirt over that to hopefully hide the stench and then get grass to grow over it. I'm hoping as we dig the rest we don't unearth the Exxon Valdez, a container that says "property of Love Canal", or even better; a "Welcome to Chernobyl" sign.