Rain barrel maintenance

I realized this winter that the rain barrel was noticeably tilting backward.

I say "noticeably", but it's not very obvious in this picture. What is obvious is that I had trouble taking pictures that didn't include dogs. The beautiful girl standing beside the rain barrel is Cleo, a fairly recent edition to the K's Garden family. Our first German Shepherd Lucy passed last summer at the age of 13, so when Cleo, who is a senior citizen, showed up at our local humane society, we knew we had to give her a good home. She's a wonderful, sweet girl.

Back to the rain barrel. I wanted to get it straightened out before it got filled with water again. I was kind of surprised at the amount of muddy sludge in the bottom of it.

This isn't even half of it. The cinder blocks had settled considerably since we put them in.

I dug out the area and leveled it off.

This time I got smart and put paver leveling sand down before replacing the blocks. I even used a level to get them fairly straight.

Inspector Cleo

Now the rain barrel is back, clean and level and ready for rain, if we ever get any.