Just before I had my most recent stroke, The Squire and I spent a day or two trying to clean a clog in the drain that carries the overflow from the pond into the stream. Recently, the drain has clogged again, and the pond was in serious danger of overflowing. Remembering how much trouble we had gone through before, we decided to rent a “mini-rooter” from Home Depot, and The Squire went off this morning to collect this machine.
The first hour, the work went fairly quickly, as each pass of the “drill” pulled up a few bits of root.
And then it jammed. We couldn’t get the drill to go any further into the pipe, and even with both of us pulling on it, we couldn’t get it loose.
Great.
I headed down to the stream to see if I could push a hand-held plumbers snake up the tube, and slipped on the wet grass – flat on my back, all the way to the stream. Too late to worry about trying to keep dry – or clean – so I got into the water and mucked about with the plumbers snake.
And then I couldn’t stand up again. (Well, better me than The Squire.)
He finally managed to get a good grip on the cable, and the both of us tugged and pulled until we saw a bit of muck at the top of the pipe. And we pulled, and we pulled, and pulled. We also huffed and puffed a bit. I think I saw one of the trees jiggle a bit, but it might have been the wind.
At any rate, this is what we pulled out of the pipe. Twenty-five feet of roots and dirt, which The Squire promptly dubbed “the Ana-ponda”.
thisendoftheswamp 
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