Water Pooling in My Backyard—Worth Digging a Trench?

It’s kind of a balancing act with clay, isn’t it? Sometimes I wish I’d just splurged on a French drain from the start...

Yeah, that’s what I keep coming back to—clay soil just doesn’t play nice. I’ve been reading up and it seems like no matter what you do, silt and roots eventually win. The filter fabric idea sounds good in theory, but I’ve heard stories about it clogging up too. Part of me wonders if digging a trench is just delaying the inevitable, but then again, the cost of a full French drain setup is no joke. Decisions, decisions...