Going Green

Um... no, I'm not talking about getting all environmentally friendly*, I'm talking about putting in a lawn.  In our yard.  Uh, yeah... in the desert.

*We are mostly environmentally friendly people.  If you saw the vegetable graveyard... er, compost pile we have out back, or know that we frequently recycle twice as much as we throw away... I've even made five or six trips to recycle concrete... you'd know that.  I just need a little green, soft, cool, slightly damp lawn to walk, sit or play upon.

Getting the lawn wasn't exactly high drama, but there has been some drama surrounding our yard.  Last fall when I (finally) went to register Maisy, I learned that we have a $460 lien on the property.  Why?  Because there was dead grass in the yard.  All of the city's records stopped just over a month before we bought the place (staff shortage), so technically, we're not responsible for it.  Dave, our realtor, has been working with the escrow and title companies to get it resolved. 

We had a small amount of hope that the title company would pay to have our lawn put in, but they are standing by the fact that the city didn't report that lien (there was another larger lien for something else, but that had been reported and handled).

Nine or 10 months ago, Tom ripped out all of the dead lawn.  We thought we'd have no problem getting a new lawn in before the real heat of summer, but then the truck conked out and we now have a second massive car payment.  Functioning cars (both are hybrids... we're environmentally friendly, I tell ya!) or lawn?  It was a tough choice, but I guess the right one was made.

Now that winter's over, and we still have that lien hanging, it was time to do some yard work.  Dave thinks he can get the city to drop the fee as long as the work has been done.  Can I just admit here that I'm glad for the lien because it meant doing the lawn before we otherwise would have?  Don't tell Tom... or Dave.

So we had some sod delivered...

Did a little gardening,

(Okay, some of us might have done more intense, hard labor)

And some of us might have dragged our feet more than we should have (and we still didn't get to go see Amber again, dang it all!),  

But in the end, a lawn was made.

I am more sore than I've been in years, but it was good to work side by side with Tom and have something to show for it.  He did most of the truly hard stuff.  Corey (mostly) cleared the spot on the other side of the driveway and picked up rocks and debris that came out of our yard (a four foot length of rusted metal? really?).  I cut open all the bags of topper and topsoil and did most of the sod cutting (edges and sprinklers).  And I swept dirt for what seemed like days.  Tom did pretty much everything else.

My dad and Margaret showed up at 8:00 last night when they'd heard we were struggling to wrap things up.  I could have cried.  Margaret took control of Madelyn and wrangled our downstairs floor into shape while Corey made dinner.  Dad helped lay sod and used the roller.  As soon as it was done, they were out of here.  They took a two hour drive (round trip) to help us.

We've definitely learned our lesson.  We didn't think we'd need much help (a brother-in-law helped us get all of the non-sod components home), and the backyard will be a much larger project (digging sprinkler trenches in clay? should be fun); we didn't want to ask for help too often.

I have already sent out an email to our local-ish friends and family.  We probably won't get to the backyard until next year, so they can either move far, far away, or be ready for the Bat Signal.