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Now that the driveway replacement is complete, it’s time to battle the ditch from Hell.

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This feature has been the bane of my husband’s existence ever since we moved to this house 21 years ago.

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It runs the full length of our property on both sides of the driveway and was dug (illegally as it turns out) by the previous owner.

Our neighbors on the left don’t have a ditch.

Our neighbors on the right don’t have a ditch.

The farm across the street doesn’t have a ditch… but we have a ditch that over the years has been caving in, filling up with gravel and broken road tar and becoming a nightmare to mow, weed whack and kept clean.

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My husband had the grass growing all the way to the road until the town in their infinite wisdom decided to scrape the sides down to gravel last year.

This increased the caving in by making it more unstable to snow plows and mail trucks that ride on top.

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Needless to say we’d had enough of maintaining said ditch and asked the driveway company what it would cost to lay perforated pipe the entire length and cover it with dirt we could seed and mow a flat lawn all the way to the road.

We were told nothing could be done until we had a signed permit. So we went to the town… who told us to go to Maine public works.

So we went to Maine public works… who told us to go the state DOT.

So we went to the state DOT… who told us to go to the town.

After a week and a half of this insanity I wanted to repeatedly stab myself with a fork… but my husband figured marching up to the capitol and finding the head man would be more productive. So that’s what he did. He found the guy who’s in charge of every single road in the state. He explained the situation and arranged for this overworked fellow to visit our property in order to give permission for us to fill in our ditch.

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Head guy came, head guy looked, head guy listened, and said he had to talk to legal.

A week later head guy called with a denial.

To which we wanted to say…

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The lame excuse he gave was this…. if he granted permission for us to fill in the ditch, who’s to say the next owner wouldn’t want up dig it out again.

What the …. what?

Who cares!

To pacify my irate husband, he agreed to visit us again with a proposal that the state could come and dig out the ditch, build up the sides and make it more stable… at their cost. Which sounds good in theory but in reality would just put us back to where we were 21 years ago with a steeper ditch that’s harder to keep clean. And I hate to say it, but we aren’t getting any younger.

Head guy is coming back next week.

I’ll keep you posted.

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