Recycled cycles

We received a post card informing us of a public hearing concerning a project involving a public ditch.  Hmmm, says I.  What could this be?  I checked the website, learned a bunch of stuff and set out on my bicycle to do some personal investigation.

But first I came to this.

The lady who lives in that house is, like most of us, suffering some quarantine fatigue so she came right out from around the corner of the house to engage in some conversation.  I suggested to her that she is recycling her cycles, which amused her.

She said, come on back tomorrow, I may have some veggies in the cart.  So that was fun.

I rode over to where the public ditch project is and ended up stopping for a mid-ride sit down near one of the Twin Lakes.

So the ditch was constructed between 1906 and 1908.  Much of this state and most others is heavily ditched.  When European settlers arrived here they did not find as much dry and arable land as now exists.  The change was that those folks drained all the swamps and lots of small ponds.  Here in a heavily urbanized area most of the ditch has beenl "buried" which means that the ditch now runs through underground pipes.  We have a stretch here of about a half mile in length which is located in an area which was occupied by trucking terminals and because trucking terminals do not depend much on aesthetics is still above ground.  The trucking companies have gone away.  Some redevelopment is going on.  As part of the plan our city has proposed putting the ditch into a pipe, a big one, 84 inches in diameter, while creating green space on the area now occupied by the ditch.

I was not aware of this above ground ditch (I haven't lived here long enough I guess) so I wanted to get a look at it.  This is relevant to me because I live near the upstream end of the ditch which means that rainwater runoff from my yard is carried away and out of my town by this ditch.

What follows then is several views of what the ditch looks like now.

Here is where the ditch first goes underground, near Fairview and County Road C.  This photo taken facing north.

Actually, at my back and south across County Road C there is a slough which I was only vaguely aware of.  I strongly suspect that there is a pipe coming from that body of water which is part of the ditch but that part IS underground so this is where the above ground segment begins.  It seems to me to already strongly resemble green space.

The ditch runs through an area of mostly warehouses, a remnant of the trucking industry but considerably reduced in size.  This is near Dohrn.  Still looking pretty green.

Just across Terrace from there appears something the project proposal calls Oasis Pond.  I am familiar with that body of water from having coached a softball team which played its games at Oasis Park.

This area shows lots of us, a fairly well traveled looking path near the bottom of the ravine.  This is approximately across the street from Pizza Luce.

And the start of the first segment not proposed for burial, north of County Road C2, near Northwestern.  A short time after this the ditch drains into Little Lake Johanna which is connected by a final ditch segment to Lake Johanna.

So the rainwater from my yard drains into Lake Johanna.

Here is today's rose, another one pretty strongly in the blue family.

That one is located at a construction company headquarters just across the street from the warehouses near the ditch.