On Our Turf

The plan for Friday was to get outside and do a little patchwork sodding in the front yard. Back in November I got a little overambitious with the excavations in the front yard when I dug up a bunch of Monkey Grass and we got rid of the Quince (replacing it with a smaller Vitex Chasteberry). To cover up the muddy bare spots, we got a modicum of sod and figured we'd deal with the lawn in the Spring.

So, on the second day of Spring, we got busy. We picked up a pallet of sod early that morning and figured that we'd have some left over to replace some weedy areas in the dog's back yard. We started digging and turning the soil and pulling weeds when I found what appears to be an original water line or perhaps a faucet to our old well...among many other things like old sprinkler parts, bottle caps, random roots. No rusty coffee cans full of gold or cash though...

Queen of the Hill!

We dug and raked and grated until our fingers bled.... and then we had a moment of prayer.

I TOLD Scott not to snap any pics of me looking like a Heifer, but he doesn't always listen....

Just kidding. I wasn't praying or meditating, but we probably could have used some prayers during this Weekend Warrior project.

We ended up moving some of the patchwork sod installed in November so we could transfer the soil from the low end of the yard to the higher end (grating the yard down toward the drainpipe like the responsible homeowners that we try to resemble). The day involved numerous requests to "Please, get mama another beer" to which my children dutifully complied. We are a team in this house!

And after a few hours of excavating many rock and metal finds and moving the dirt so it was just so, we were finally ready to roll the sod.

Clean Slate

That part was fun and therapeutic, like painting...

At the end of the pallet, this is where we were.



Emi's taking a selfie with my phone but you can see behind her that only half of the lawn is covered. And Gracie is in the fresh soil, of course!

The next morning we retrieved another pallet of sod and finished the job. Aubri kept offering to go get me a beer to help me work harder/faster, but it was cold outside (very un-Springlike) and there was no beer left.



Looking at the finished pictures now, the lawn doesn't look much different than in years past, but I can assure you that our lawn is in way better shape than it's been in years past. And we are way more intimately familiar with our lawn than we used to be.  When the grass takes root, our lawn should be beautiful and a lot less hassle for this Yardwork Junkie who'd rather not be pulling weeds.

I have also been ambitious about the backyard. I have seedlings and a hard determination to grow something new in the backyard and maximize our crops in neglected spaces. There's a lot more digging in my future and I hope this summer it pays off for this family. Right now the garden is nothing more than an oversized compost heap.

Hope you had an enjoyable beginning to your Spring too, friends!