Fighting the Flood

So today was fun.  And by fun, I mean painfully terrifying as I slowly and helplessly watched the rain come down harder and harder, while the lake in my backyard grew larger and larger.  Yes, my garden is somewhere under that flood.  Of course my dad and I had planted kale, cabbage, and squash just last weekend.  My poor little friends :(

This morning started off with me digging a hole under the trunks that we lined the garden with.  See, we live in Bridgewater, NJ where the only soil is clay.  It never drains and makes a great base of a pool.  Lucky for us, our yard is slightly beneath both of our neighbors so we get quite the river of water in it when it rains.

Notice the ditch on the right side of the fence.  We dug that to help contain and steer rain water away from the garden.  Along the fence, we lined up tree trunks and wedged mud around them to seal off the garden.  It has been working up until this monster of a storm.  This picture was taken this morning, around 9 am.  I had just dug the little trench you can see on the left side of the fence to run the water in the garden down and out through the hole I dug under the fence.  Seemed to be working well.   Until it started torrentially down-pouring for the rest of the day.

See the real concern here was last weekend we had planted beans, kale, swiss chard, cabbage, pumpkins, and squash.  Not ideal growing conditions when the ground is covered in inches of water. Now squash plants like to be planted in mounds, which might be their saving grace here.  They look like little squash islands!

As for the rest of the seedlings, only time will tell.  This picture above was also taken in the morning.  It looks dry compared to the state it is in currently.  My dad actually got home from work early and we went out in our rain gear to dig water channels to try and get the water flow away from the plants.  Our boots kept getting stuck in 6 inches of mud, and I can't wait to see when the garden dries how bizarre our footprints and "water ways" look, but we salvaged the garden to the best of our ability.  Now all there is left to do is pray for no more rain.  For now, I hope everyone is safe and dry, with a raised bed garden :)

The next two photos show the "garden" (perhaps we should have planted rice) during the rescue operation.

P.S.  Pardon the blurriness of the last two photos of my dad and I.  My mom took them :)