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Mine field

We were subjected to a rather big storm early in June - with somewhat... dramatic... consequences. Short version: some water sept in through the basement's walls on the front side of the house. We spent a good part of the night "playing" around with floor clothes and buckets. That's what it looked like in the morning:

This is the other part of the basement:

We definitely needed to take action quickly. Feeling paranoid and checking the basement every 5 minutes whenever it rains doesn't sound like much of a long-term plan. So we had an earthwork contractor come over to give us a quotation on weatherproofing the house's foundations on the front of the house.

As it turns out, it's kind of a good news/bad news scenario.

The good news: the contractor is (well, should be, anyway) coming this week to do the actual work. So, if everything goes as planned, we'll be able to stop worrying whenever it rains.
The bad news: we need to clear 1.5 to 2m of terrain along the wall.

So I had to remove all of this :

I started by moving annual plants (well, you never know, some of them might survive it), and today I moved all remaining perennial plants (or put them into jars).
I also had to clear the area between the manhole on the right and the right border of the picture below:

It took a while, but now I have a wonderful mine field where the lovely flower bed used to be 

So where did the plants go? Well, I re-planted annuals wherever I could. Perennial plants are waiting in jars or buckets... That's what it looks like:

There were quite a few petunias amongst the annual plants I moved, and they're not in a very good shape for now. However the rest don't look too bad for now... Even if they were dying, it would not be a serious problem. Most perennial plants are looking fine as well, I'm only a little worried about rose bushes. Worst case scenario, I'll have to prune them to reduce the amount of leaves and flower buds they need to feed.

I find the situation quite annoying at any rate - having to destroy one of the few areas of the garden that really started to look good... On the other hand it's better to do it now, I suppose, as the plants haven't been taking root for too long. If we'd found out about the flooding later, their roots would have been more developed and it would have damaged them even more.

Still in the "mine field" category, but somewhat more rejoicing: I dug up some of the potatoes (the earliest cultivar).

Granted, most of them are really small, and the yield is low. On the other hand, this Spring was really dry and the soil was poor, so it's mostly a good surprise; in addition, potatoes seem to really improve the soil, as they break clods.

And yes, there are two types of potatoes on the picture: the red ones grew in the compost heap, probably from potato peelings!