Our Latest Project & the Kindness of Neighbors

We started our latest project last week. Until Saturday, it was all prep work--gathering supplies, making lists, calling the DIG-RITE people, marking the space, etc. Jason says that we weren't ready. He stated several times that this was the least we've planned to do a project and that next time we should plan more. He's probably right, but it's been that kind of month and we had a free weekend with good weather in the forecast so we jumped on it anyway. Well 'bless our hearts'....

Saturday, we rented a truck and a sod cutter. With the sod cutter, we took the top layer of sod/soil off of the ground where we wanted our rose lines to be as well as the side of the house where the path would be. That thing is slick. Just an FYI, if you ever need to clear a lot of sod and have crap soil like we do, I think it was worth the $. After that, we planted our rose bushes. I'm a little worried that they will not make it. We kept them moist but didn't get them in the ground as quickly as we should have. Keeping our fingers crossed....if not, we get a one-time replacement if they do not make it through the first year.

On Saturday, we also picked up a LOT of small rock for the walkway. We didn't know which places were open on Sunday so we tried to get a lot of our supplies on Saturday. We ended up running to Menard's probably 3 times that day (it felt like). The girls LOVE Menard's by the way. It's that play ground and all the fabulous displays. Hard not to love.

I can say, without a doubt, that I'm tired of shoveling and wheelbarrowing sod, wet dirt, rock and mulch. I got sunburned over the weekend which did not improve my outlook. Jason, of course, takes the brunt of every project. He's so wonderful and can really get a lot of work done in a day (thank goodness because if it were up to me, the project would've ended at the digging holes in the clay for the rose bushes. I seriously could not get that stinkin' shovel to break up that dirt. It doesn't help that there are piles of asphalt and concrete in there too. Jason broke off a shovel handle due to the 'conditions').

Anyway, the pictures here are taken at the end of each day. On Sunday, Jason and I began by taking 9 scoops of mulch all around the house. We will probably not have enough for the 'new' side either. Yikes. We had to return the truck around 2pm so we wanted to make sure that we had everything done with it first. After mulching ,we worked on edging the walkway. Now, don't get me wrong, I KNOW there are better tools/solutions that we could've used for some of these jobs, but this is what we had--we ended up etching out the entire walkway edging 3-4 inches deep with the claw of the hammer. I was the winner of that job. It actually worked about 100times better than any of the shovels/spades/etc. that we have in our garage, but my lily-leathered hand were aching for about 3 days. That's what I get for having a desk job, eh?

So, here's where the story starts to get interesting. I'm doing the claw hammer thing while Jason is shoveling dirt and our neighbor drives up. He owns an excavation company that is right across the road from us. To be honest, this is a neighbor who doesn't live exactly on our street and we have never had the opportunity to officially meet him. We wave when we see him, but that's really it. We were a bit surprised when he parked in front of our house and provided us with some advice about the 'dam' we were creating with our edging and how we needed to build up the soil line so it would all drain away from the foundation as well as raising our air conditioning unit. We thanked him for the advice and made plans to raise the air conditioning unit. He brought us a drain pipe so that we could place it by the unit as well. We all went on our merry way. Of course, Jason was giving me the 'poorly prepared' speech as we would now have an 'unanticipated expense' or two. After another trip to Menard's (for concrete blocks and more drainage), we were surprised to see a backhoe coming down the road. Not only did this kind neighbor bring us two loads of dirt, but he also took the time to drop it all right next to the house, spread it out with the backhoe and tamp it down to save us some work. What a lifesaver!!! Another one of our neighbors helped Jason get the unit up on concrete blocks. It was certainly one of those days that brings a smile to your face. We live in a great neighborhood and today was just a reminder of that.

After this amount of work, I will confess that J and I were getting slap happy. You know it's bad when laying on a pile of gravel not only feels good, but great :) We were a bit giddy from our good neighbor fortune and were sure that it was obvious to everyone how in over our heads we really are. Hence the "bless our hearts" phrase came our frequently: "Wow, they're certainly trying, but bless their hearts, they really have no clue what they are doing..." You get the idea. Thank goodness for people taking pity on us.

So, this week, we continue to shovel and arrange and fix. We are several days away from being complete with our new project, but you get the idea of what it will look like from the pictures. That big pile of dirt at the front is going to be a flower bed of some sort. This brings us to our second measure of kindness this week. I ran home on Tuesday and started baking pies. I wanted to have SOMETHING to give to our kind neighbors who had helped us out over the weekend. After that, J and I continued shoveling. Two of our neighbors were outside cutting their grass and all of the sudden we notice that one of them is mowing past the line that he usually stops (on our property). Pretty soon, the other neighbor takes the other side of the lawn. These two split up our yard and PUSH mowed it after finishing their own yards. They said that we'd been working so hard and if we didn't get our yard mowed before it rained we wouldn't be able to. Those guys got the other pie for dessert and we'll be looking for ways to repay them :)

So, I started this post a couple of days ago and we are a bit further along that what the pictures show after today (Saturday's) work. We got the rest of the walk finished all the way to the patio and the beds are mulched. We also put some of the leftover stone as a path through the mulch to the water faucet and edged the mulched area in the back with stone. I'll post updated pictures next time. It will probably be next spring before there are actually plants and flowers in those beds :)