Back lane engineers

Sunday the little kid in this middle-aged body could not resist Mother Nature's temptations!
With temperatures well above freezing the snow was melting extremely fast on Sunday. When I was a kid that meant my dad and I would get our ticket punched to go outside and pretend to be engineers.
Well this Sunday I went out back of my house on Third Street, armed with a hoe and a spade shovel.
Mother Nature was actually kind to me on Sunday. She had already carved a steady drain from the alley to the ditch at the back of my northern neighbour's property.
Usually I have to dig such a pathway, to get it to stop draining into my garage. You see my garage is lower than the back lane.
A late neighbour, and a former Mayor of Rainy River, told me that years ago before the Town had a grader, the town would just put more fill in the back lane when it got rough. Hence my problems with drainage.
Luckily on Sunday very little water was draining into my garage but the lane was a mud-hole.
So I took my hoe and went up and down a few houses north and made sure there was good drainage for the run-off!
By the evening the lane was starting to dry up and I was a proud kid... oops I mean engineer!
I half expected to see my dad up the alley doing the same thing Sunday... but he was busy digging drains in his yard.
Oh well... it was all for nothing as Mother Nature sent us another dump of snow yesterday.
–Until then, Ken