Solutions

So we met with the engineer on Friday. He suggested we cover the hillside in geotextile. It comes in many different forms, but is basically a fabric that would cover the hill and keep water from creating more rivulets, while the plants take root.

Soon after talking to him, I ran home to get on the phone and find us some geotextile. I'm still waiting on some info, but so far my estimation for getting some is 4-6 weeks. gulp.
Honestly I don't think we could afford another bad rainstorm. And who knows whether we'll get one or not in the next month.

So.... GB came up with a temporary solution based on some of the stuff the engineer told us. We need to slow down the flow of water. We have this amazing bamboo growing, so his idea was to cut bamboo and then lay it horizontally across the hillside- so that water will divert and flow down the bamboo instead of right through the mud.
Sounds good and simple, right???


He had to literally drag me out of the house for this work project. City girl was happily sewing and being domestic at home, and really had no desire to get muddy and sweaty.

But this was a 2 person job, for sure. And.... it was a vastly underestimated 2 hour job.

Here's GB looking at the bamboo. That one on the right?? Anno, the nursery guy cut that a few weeks ago but couldn't get it out.
Here's GB looking up, thinking.... shit. These bamboo are sort of stuck up there. Because if you look at the next picture, you can see that the whole side of this bamboo plant- where the poles are the straightest- grow right up into a giant mango tree.
GB busts out the chansaw. This is the easy part, for sure.
HA HA HA! you think you can actually MOVE an 80-100ft bamboo shoot out of the clutches of a mango tree?? ha ha ha!

After this point I pretty much stopped taking pictures. We decided to go home and get tow straps and use the truck to pull the bamboo. Brilliant idea. We would have gotten nowhere without the truck.

Even so, the bamboo was very very heavy. We dragged each piece down to the site, and cut them up, but it was hard work. Karen was not happy.

We ended up placing a bunch of bamboo like we wanted.... but only about 1/3 of what we really wanted to do. But it was getting late, I had to get Luka, and we had guests coming for dinner.

The ray of hope:
We had noticed that the angel's trumpet tree I bought GB for Valentine's Day had been buried in the landslide.

While placing the bamboo, GB noticed that the tree had sent up a shoot. Yay!



And for the record.... today?? Very sore is Karen.

It doesn't seem to be working YET. But check out the video below of us pulling the bamboo. You can really get a sense of how looooong each shoot is!