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Sunday, September 12, 2010

More Work in the Yard

We're waking up from a too-long hiatus on our front yard work (something about getting fired and being pregnant and starting a new company and being pregnant and building the new business and....and....well, we kind of really REALLY lost steam on that particular set of projects.)

The Burly Men from my family came over yesterday, and discovered (like so many before) that we are not on top of dirt. Our house is actually built on a pernicious blend of baseball-sized rocks and clay, with the exception of trucked-in dirt from generations of previous owners trying to make this yard into something that plant life can thrive in. Just add our dirt on top!

The Burly Men blasted a huge hole in the ground to plant our poor fig tree in though. Hooray! They took a vine maple down to the ground- vine maples are the worst weeds we get. If you miss one when it's small, they are impossible to pull up, and sprout new branches like a green Hydra. They marked where the flower bed will run along the wall, and started pick-axing that dirt and shoveling it into a wheelbarrow to add to our dirt piles in the back. Oh, they also found the drainage pipe I most awesomely forgot to tell them was located directly under where they were so manfully swinging their pick axe. Luckily, the awesome Wonder Daddy is now a pro at fixing and and installing drainage pipes, and we had a scrap piece of pipe that fit in perfectly. (Have I used the word "awesome" enough in this paragraph? Awesome.)

We have five yards of dirt coming on Saturday, so we WILL get the flower beds dug out and hopefully get the veggie beds built so that by Saturday night we will be buttoned up for Winter.

Left to do:
1) Weed. Umm, remember that hiatus? Shameful. I am full of shame. One big ball, soon-to-be-sneezing, shame.
2) Build garden beds and dig out about a foot to fill in with good dirt
3) Dig flower beds out to make way for beautiful rock-free dirt. Not clay.
4) Dig in manure to existing dirt
5) Shove dirt around the yard and level it all out, fill in beds, etc. We have 2 or 3 yards in the back too, that will probably get pulled out to the front as well.
6) FUTZ! Is that a word? It's what I do. Planting, sowing seeds, "fluffing." You know, stuff I can reasonably do during nap times or with the girls in tow. I have rose bushes heeled in in the backyard that need transplanting, bulbs, etc.

(Well, actually I intend to use the girls a LOT for number 1- I am the proud happy owner of a new scuffle hoe, and I figure if I hoe and rake, the girls can do all the bending and put the weeds in the bucket! My belly does not allow for so much bending any more, at least not without a lot of complaint.)


Oh my heck, we might actually have a yard soon. We've been living in a mud pit/construction zone since we started our "2 or 3 weekends TOPS" project last February. As a reminder, we simply intended to uncover the existing wall, and build beds out front. How we ended up with construction crews, back hoes, concrete trucks...well, that's life isn't it?



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2 comments:

Su said...

Hey, at least you have good reasons for losing steam. Me, I just feel Blah about all my projects. I'll go bake some banana muffins to make me feel better.

Oh, erm. I wanted to ask you about that sculpture or carving behind E there. Who did that? It's very interesting. Will you show us a picture of it?

LunaMoonbeam said...

Looks great!!