The rain came less than 30 minutes after I finished mowing the Lower 40 (aka our front yard) and put the John Deere away.

Good for the yard. Bad for the driveway, which looks like the surface to the moon: craters abound, canyons run the length of it and too much of our gravel now resides in the ravine below the 450-foot of road that climbs a 35-degree slope up to our garage.

Heavy rains continue to take a tool and defeat every effort to stop the erosion.

Last year, the slurry mix we use for the driveway held fast, surviving even the onslaught on ice in the freak storm last December. This year, erosion from pounding rains has devastated the main artery to our home.

Like Iraq, the battle to save our driveway is turning into a war without end.