Shoveling and More Shoveling 5-22

We have been working hard. I tried to post yesterday morning but our internet was miserably slow!

Forging ahead with the yards, on Wednesday Larry had someone to dig about 50 feet of trench in the backyard so he could run the pipe for our drip system. Our soil has a lot of clay mixed with sand and it is like concrete, no rocks, those are clay clumps…the guy had a teeny backhoe…I didn’t get any pictures because I was leaving as he arrived and was done by the time I got back. It only took about an hour and the trench is wider than Larry needed but for the price and the time and pain saved it was worth it! Larry got busy with getting all the pipes run.

Yesterday, Thursday, we got started filling in the trench…that’s a LOT of dirt, we ran water in it to get the air out and help all the dirt settle so we wouldn’t have tons of dirt left over…what comes out never all goes back in…at least not right away and we don’t have time to wait for it to settle.

Just about break time from shoveling the truck arrived with our decorative rock. We got our plastic down where the bulk of the Nevada Gold rock was going and had them dump there and then the red lava was dumped in the driveway.

Oh, we changed the plans for both of the yards. Something wasn’t working, so I decided in the front because there were already so many angles and box shapes on our house to just go with that, so it is more geometric and simple looking with larger planting areas…it will be “mahvalous” when we finally finish!

So we decided to let the trench rest and settle and we got busy shoveling rock and then during the afternoon our lumber was delivered for the planter boxes…the wood is pressure treated and a hideous teal green color….doesn’t match our color scheme…but in this hot sun we figure it’ll fade in no time, plus the plants and rocks in the planters should hide a lot of it. Larry got those built and placed, they are just 2x4’s to keep the rock out…I didn’t want to plant in the rocks, I just want those to be blocks of texture and color.

Today is more shoveling…Larry was up with the chickens fixing the grade on the side of the house so the trailer won’t be so “tippy” going into the backyard. We finished filling in our trench, Larry is off to the hardware store….again and I am trying to get a blog posted during this lovely down time!

I have been slathered in sunblock, which I detest, but I didn’t fry…I poop out about 2:30…the sun is too intense for me and then I can get back to it around 4:30 or 5. We hope to get the rock done in the front yard today…I don’t know when we’ll get started on the plants…I am still trying to come up with a plan for that.