I drove by our prospective house on Friday after Aidan's playgroup which is only a few houses away. What was a little ribbon of standing water on the property now encompasses the entire property except a rise where the house and barn are. It's a full half acre at least of a couple of inches of water.

Lucky for me, one of my friends was an environmental engineer before she had her son. I called her to ask what could be done. I was thinking along the lines of, if you have lemons, make lemonade: we could channel it into a little rock lined stream, or dig a pond and use the excavated earth to bring up the rest of the property. However, it may be considered a Federal Wetland in which case we couldn't do anything and it would be like having really seedy lemons, or the kind that are so hard you can't get any reasonable amount of juice out of them. She has a former co-worker who would know just what kinds of lemons we have by looking at the plants that are growing there and who happens to drive by it on her way to work every day.

The sellers mentioned to us once that there was horseradish growing wild there and I am encouraged by this information about growing horseradish: It grows best in a deep, fertile soil that is reasonably well drained (clay is not a good soil for horseradish) and in the full sun. Another site warns that it is invasive, that once it is established, you can't really get rid of it. So maybe once there was a garden there, and the standing water is not normal, but the result of a remarkably wet winter.

We have to have the morgage commitment for this house by April 20th, so by then I'll really know if we're buyng it or not.