I bought 14yds of white masonry grade sand and spread it over my back yard.
It has worked great.

topher wrote:

Hi,

I moved into a new house last July, and noticed that one corner of my
back lawn got a lot more water than the rest, and was streaked by little
rivulets. But with the drier weather in late summer, it was never a
real problem.

This Spring, however, the corner of the yard is swampy and un-mowable
even 4 days after the last rainfall. This morning I did the best I
could to mow it, and now it's raining again. The lawn there consists of
some kind of hardy grass and now a lot of moss.

I have no idea what I can do about this, so I thought I'd ask here.

A rough sketch: is at http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~topher/lawn-drainage.png

The water seems to come out from the ground in a grassy area between
properties, flows across some of my lawn, and runs along some tall
grasses before gradually dissapearing underground. Down toward the
road, a pipe empties the ground water into a drainage ditch.

Any suggestions?

- Topher