Yard Work

Well, we began the yard work at our new house, and I can really understand why Bryan always said that he never wanted to put in a yard—it’s a LOT of work! (Of course I’m not the one doing the work, poor Bryan is, but I help out when I can, and I sympathize when he’s out there). We were going to pour some new concrete to extend our patio, but the home builders had to come and replace a window well that was pulling away from the foundation of the house. In the process of pulling out the old one and putting in the new one, they dug up a lot of dirt and “fluffed” it all up in the process. I’m sure there’s a better term for it, but basically the dirt had lots of air in it and when Bryan put some water on it just to see how much “fluffiness” there was, his shovel went easily down about 4 feet into the ground. So, needless to say, we didn’t want to put concrete on top of that. We’ll let the ground settle a bit.

So, Thursday night we debated and debated about whether or not to trench on Friday. We knew that if we trenched, we were committed to everything because we couldn’t wait around and let the trenches fill in with dirt and/or rain. The forecast looked good for Friday, but not so good for Saturday…but we decided to just go for it! We want grass this summer! So, Bryan took Friday off and rented a trencher and dug all the trenches on Friday. We had a great neighbor and great brother-in-law come help Bryan on Friday afternoon to start laying all the pipe. I went out Friday night and flagged all the spots for the sprinkler heads (my measly little contribution, after the kids were in bed). So Saturday morning we were pretty well prepared. Unfortunately the weathermen were all correct when they said it would rain…the guys were all SOAKED to the bone, and unbelievably muddy. Luckily they worked really fast and got all the pipes in and fitted by about 10:30 that morning. (The sprinkler heads weren’t set yet, but that can wait for better weather.) I just want to thank from the bottom of my heart our wonderful helpers, Russ, Aaron, Burke and Nathan so much!!

That afternoon, around 12:00, the skies cleared, the sun came out, and we had several hours of beautiful, warm sunny weather. Talk about a kick in the pants…the muddy pants! Oh well.

Bryan is off to California again this week for work. He’ll be back on Wednesday and we hope to get the sprinkler heads all set by this weekend. Then, we just have to bring in the mulch/topsoil/fertilizer and get it tilled in and we’re ready to do the curbing and plant the seed! Yippee!

In other news, Tess continues to crack me up with her cute little stories and big imagination. 1-The other day she told me a story about when she went to the dentist. The dentist was named Dr. Jackyjill and the nurse was Minnie Anymen. There was also a (regular) doctor at the dentist office named SillyBillyJillyJill. 2-She’s been asking me lately about what kind of clouds she sees in the sky as we’re driving in the van. I’ve been trying to remember my elementary school science lessons on clouds (cumulus, nimbus, cirrus, stratus, etc.) and I’m a little rusty. So, I give my best guess, but she never seems satisfied. She says, “but what’s IN the clouds?” So I told her that all clouds have water in them. Then she proceeded to tell me about the “pricket clouds.” Confused, I asked her what a “pricket cloud” is and she told me “there was a big giant pricket cloud with lots of prickets. And they were eating all their food! But then, the birds came and ate them all up, and they were saved!” I had to laugh when I realized that she must’ve learned a lesson in Sunbeams about the Mormon pioneers, the crickets, and the seagulls. She’s a cutie.