Bane of my life (at least lately!)

For some of you that know me, you know that I can stand a mess for only so long before it really starts to bug me. I mean, really, really, bug me. Well, this pile of dirt has really been buggy me lately. How did all this start you might ask. Well, actually quite innocently enough. Let me explain.

Way back in March, when we poured our new patio and put in the flower bed/retaining wall behind the pool, we needed dirt for the concrete work and for filling the flower bed. So, Dan ordered a dump truck load of dirt. Yes, you read correctly, a dump truck load - 17 yards!


I know that you really can't tell how much dirt this is from this picture- but let me tell you - that is A LOT OF DIRT!!! (And this picture was taken after they had used about 1/3 of it in the patio.) Now, it was a good thing to have while we were filling up the flower bed (although I wish we had treated it with Round-Up before we put it in the flower bed and planted flowers in it as now I'm having to pull up grass). However, we could have gotten away with 1/3 of the amount of dirt Dan ordered. (We probably could have used 1/4 as much.) The point is, we filled the flower bed and we were left with all this dirt.

The first thing we did, to try and get rid of it, was to load up Dan's truck and haul it over to the open field next to Mom's house and dump it. Now, after 10 to 12 trips back and forth, we figured out that was NOT going to work.

Then we tried giving it away - and our neighbor came over and got a couple (yes, just a couple) of wheelbarrow loads full. Not a whole lot of help. As, the months passed, the temperatures go up and the pile of dirt decides to grow ---------------------

Okay - this is not a good picture of the pile of dirt - because actually, I was taking a picture of the hawk on the fence. However, it is the only picture I have that shows what happened to that awful pile of dirt. It began to grow - okay, not the actual dirt, but the grass. The grass got so high that the yard man wouldn't even try to "mow" the grass down with a "weed-whacker"!

Now, it was really starting to bother me. Here we are, spending time, money and effort trying to get the house fixed and we have this awful eye-sore in the back yard in the form a huge pile of dirt/grass.

So, I told Dan that my goal for this week was to get rid of this eye-sore before Bruce (our yard man) showed up on Friday to do the yard. I wanted that pile of dirt/grass gone so he could mow the entire yard!

The first step was to get rid of the tall grass so we could actually get to the dirt pile - so over to the kids we went and borrowed their 'weed-whacker' and my darling man cut the grass. Then early Sunday morning we started working on loading up wheel barrow loads of dirt and placing the dirt on low spots in the yard (and we had plenty of those where the 23 palm trees were taken out of the front yard). So, while Dan would shovel the dirt and move the wheel barrow I would spread the dirt out. When he got tired of shoveling - I would shovel awhile, but he wouldn't let me move the wheel barrow (isn't he such a gentleman?). When it got too hot that we just couldn't work any more we stopped and got in the pool for awhile. Then we worked on other projects - I think Sunday was the back porch and pool area.

Then Monday, we did the same thing again - but then Monday afternoon - after it had cooled down we went out and worked on that dirt pile some more. That is until the mosquitoes ran up inside.

Tuesday morning we were determined to get it finished before we went and did the errands we had to do in town. So, early Tuesday morning we were out in the back yard working hard - and just worked until about 10 o'clock and had to stop - just too hot and humid. We were just a little short of our goal, but we could see the end - we just couldn't quite reach it in the heat and humidity. However, last night, after dinner, it had cooled down some and there was a nice breeze. So, Dan and I went outside and decided that we were going to finish that pile of dirt - so about an hour and a half later ------------------




it was gone!!!!!!! YAHOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One of our reasons for being so dead set on getting it finished last night was we have a 60% chance of rain today - and we didn't want to get rained out. Plus, today was the day the garbage men come for yard trash and there was plenty of dead grass in that pile of dirt.

Anyway, it is done and now I'm working on a way to turn this area into the "fire pit" area. I'll figure something out.

Oh, and just in case you are wondering, Dan and I are so sore we can hardly move - but that pile of dirt is history!