The Husband makes a tactical error he'll live to regret

The rain had been hammering down all day. The area was under an orange weather warning, rivers were rising, roads were closing, and sensible people were tucked up in bed by 9pm. At 10.30pm, I suddenly sat bolt upright and thought: “The drainage outlet!”

Now, at that time of night most people would have ignored this thought. I married one of those people.

“Do you think we should go and check whether the splash pad is overgrown?” I asked The Husband. Notice the word we. The Husband noticed it too.

“No,” he replied from the warmth of the bed, without hesitation. “That sounds like a gardening thing.” A gardening thing. As though water management during a major weather event is somehow a hobby.

“Look, it hasn’t rained properly for ages,” I said. “Neither of us has given that outlet pipe a second thought all year. But remember when it got so overgrown a few years back that everything backed up?” Apparently, the combination of an orange rain warning and twelve straight hours of rain had caused my brain to retrieve this memory at exactly 10.30pm and classify it as an emergency. The Husband, meanwhile, had reviewed the same information and classified it as Tomorrow’s Problem. From the comfort of a warm bed.

At this point I began explaining, in considerable detail, why a supportive husband would naturally accompany his wife into a rain-soaked paddock at 10.30pm to investigate a potential drainage emergency. The Husband listened patiently…from bed…wrapped in blankets...dry…warm… and displaying absolutely no intention of participating.

As my lecture on teamwork gathered momentum, he made a tactical error he’d live to regret.

“You can write a Substack about your late-night adventure” he said.

There was a brief silence.

“Well, I surely will,” I said. “And you’re not going to come out of it looking very good.”

To his credit, he didn’t seem remotely concerned. This is a man who has been married to me long enough to know two things. Firstly, I was definitely going out there whether he came or not. And secondly, once I decide something is Substack-worthy, the article is already halfway written in my head. He was already in too deep by this point in proceedings - the die had been cast.

So, off I stomped into the night.

There’s a particular type of muttering that only occurs when you’re outdoors in the rain doing a job you firmly believe should’ve been a team effort. I spent the first five minutes of my expedition conducting a one-woman running commentary on the shortcomings of husbands who remain voluntarily horizontal during times of crisis.

The sump was clear, which meant the blockage was further out. Of course it was. So off I trudged through the paddock, torch beam bouncing around in the darkness, mud squelching under my gumboots, rain pounding down, the umbrella threatening to get us airborne.

The outlet pipe had disappeared completely beneath a jungle of grass and weeds. I couldn’t even find the thing. For a few minutes I poked clumps of vegetation in generally the right area with increasing irritation while becoming steadily wetter and more convinced that I was the only person on the property taking this emergency seriously.

Eventually I located the pipe…blocked solid, naturally. My frozen fingers weren’t enough to clear it, so I stomped all the way back to the garage, collected a spade, and marched back out again. At this point I was carrying an umbrella, a torch, a spade, and several very strong opinions.

The umbrella proved useless, the torch ended up in my mouth, the rain intensified, and my language deteriorated.

Eventually I gave up on staying dry altogether and just embraced my transformation into some sort of swamp creature with a drainage mission.

I hacked away at the overgrowth surrounding the outlet, chipped at the mud, scraped at the roots and generally attacked the problem with the energy of someone who had a completely reasonable vendetta against an inanimate object.

Then suddenly a huge clump of mud gave way and what happened next was magnificent. A thick, snake-like root mass shot out of the pipe like a champagne cork, propelled by the force of all the water trapped behind it. Immediately, a roaring torrent of water burst forth and surged across the splash pad exactly as some long-forgotten drainage engineer intended.

The sump emptied, the puddling disappeared and the crisis was over. I stood there in the rain for a full minute watching the water rush freely across the paddock. It was glorious.

Not all heroes wear capes. Some wear muddy gumboots and stand alone in paddocks admiring drainage infrastructure.

Eventually I returned to the house and reported that I’d single-handedly prevented what was almost certainly an impending catastrophe involving the septic system, driveway, paddock, trees and probably the wider district. The Husband listened patiently from his nest of blankets.

“That’s good,” he said. “We’ll make a man out of you yet.”

I informed him that if midnight drainage rescues during an orange rain warning were the measure of toughness, women appeared to be doing just fine thank YOU very much.

The whole saga can be summed up simply as: every marriage needs balance. One person charges into the rain at 10.30pm armed with a spade, a torch and an exaggerated sense of responsibility. The other remains in bed and provides moral support from a distance. Or, in this case, material for a Substack article. It seems we are united in all things except late night excursions to fix drainage.

Did you know?

One of gardening’s more delightful little quirks is that a touch of cold can actually improve the flavour of some vegetables. It’s not must me imagining it...there are online sources saying the same. Carrots, parsnips and kale respond to falling temperatures by converting stored starches into sugars, effectively creating a natural antifreeze that protects their cells and leaves us with sweeter harvests. Apparently, Brussel’s Sprouts are the same, but in my humble opinion, nothing but NOTHING can save them from being a taste abomination.

There is, however, an important distinction between a light frost and a prolonged freeze. A few chilly nights can improve flavour but repeated hard frosts or frozen ground can damage roots, halt growth and turn a tasty crop into compost material. As with so many things in gardening, timing is everything: enough frost to improve dinner, not enough to destroy it.

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