Tuesday September 11, 2007

A whole new yard, well, almost.  Early this Spring right after we seeded our grass we had torrential rains that created unlovely gullies in our “yard.”  The grass didn’t do so well and with our pathetic well and sprinkler that broke every time Goldi knocked it over, we didn’t water much.  What existed was patchy grass, a lot of weeds, and ditches.  No wonder since we had precious little top soil. 

Other than the front yard, the project basically started over only this time we did a better job.  David Lee cleared brush under the trees to create a nicer transition from yard to brushy woods.  Eric came with the front loader and smoothed out gullies, re-shaped areas under the trees and spread five tractor trailer dump loads of top soil. 

Saturday was the big day.  Final raking, seeding, fertililzing, and “strawing”.  The place looks hopeful now.  If we see green instead of yellow in two or three weeks, we’ll all be jumping up and down!  Adam completely amazed me.  It was unseasonably hot for September, I thought and the guys were soon hot and tired.  Adam seemed not to notice and fairly swaggered at being big enough to work with the men.  He started spreading straw around 10:30 when I did.  I expected him to peeter out in ten minutes and opt to do something else; but he kept right on going.  At 11:30 I went in to get lunch then stayed inside since I had a photo shoot in Charlottesville at 5 and some things to do to get ready for that.    Adam headed right back out to spread more straw, throw sticks on the brush pile, and ride tractor with “Pa Beachy.”  Mike and Pa Beachy went home around 4, absoloutely whipped from the heat and the dust.  Ismael showed up around 2 and was still going strong as were David Lee and Adam.  When I returned with pizza at 7 there were at least 20 bales of straws on the trailer; but the seeding and fertilizing was done.  David Lee felt (and looked) totaled.  He wasn’t hungry and said he wasn’t sure he was going to finish.  I still had energy since I hadn’t worked on it much so I said I’d spread straw after supper.  (Meanwhile I kept making sideways glances to convince myself they really were as dirty as they appeared.  Both David Lee and Adam started the morning out with white shirts which were now brown and every crease and pore seemed to have turned that color as well.)

Apparently the pizza revived him somewhat and the three of us and Ismael headed back out.  Adam was crawling around on the trailer when he spotted me down the hill, spreading straw. 

“Sweetie,” he yelled.  I looked up in time to see him scramble off the trailer and start racing down the hill towards me.  “Sweetie,” he kept yelling.  Finally he got to me and in all seriousness he said, “Sweetie, you should not be doing this job.  This is just a daddy job.”

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• Wednesday September 26, 2007 →