The Stream at the Bottom of my Garden

looking downstream

looking upstream

I don't think I've posted any photos of the stream before, but as I didn't have any suitable images to use in this post, we dodged the rain showers and I took a couple of photos this morning. We, being Niall and me ... I'm having difficulty walking today so couldn't have done it without his help!

The stream is running much higher than usual, thanks to all the rain we've had. I'm not worried about flooding though. The bank on the other side is lower than the one my side, so if the stream does break its bank it will hopefully start to flood into the field rather than on my side. And, should it eventually flood on my side it's highly unlikely that the garden will be affected. In the photo above, on the right hand side, you can see the new wood that's the fence at the bottom of my garden. The horizontal piece of wood shows the level of my garden, so that's how high the flood water would need to get before I started to worry, and that's not likely to ever happen!

There's often ducks on the stream but I haven't seen them yet this year. I've been asked not to feed them. Apparently all the neighbours used to feed them but that led to a serious rat problem. This was resolved by all the neighbours sharing the cost to pay a pest controller to remove them. It's been fine since with no sign of any rats but it was expensive so they don't want to encourage a new rat population, hence the request to not feed the ducks.

If you look at both pictures you can see that both immediate neighbours have steps down from their gardens to the bank. I currently don't have steps, so for now have to stay on the bottom step (me), or jump down to be bank (Niall and/or gardener M). It's on the list of thinks still to be done, but for now I don't see it as a priority. I have the feeling that it's going to be horribly expensive so it can wait until I've finished renovating indoors.