I think I'm almost finished with throwing away junk, trash, and underbrush now. I'm still cleaning up after the roofers, but just little stuff-- nails, staples, bits of lath and shingle.
When Bro. Romo came to do the job earlier in the week he brought his little Bobcat tractor, and the poor thing just bounced off the earth, it was so packed. So went back home and got his giant backhoe, and today he brought the backhoe back and also his big bulldozer/loader/scraper thingy. It was just like that children's road construction video in our yard all day! I have never seen so much traffic on our street. We've been like a sideshow, with gawkers, lookers, and advice givers. The project has been especially popular with the elementary school children who walk past her on their way home. One little boy told me, "This sure is COOL!" (I think so too, but then I'm Lew Whitney's granddaughter!)
Even deep down, the dirt is just like fine talcum powder, straight out of the desert. Despite the obvious burial of mummies and plastic bags and pieces of old shag carpeting, the land is practically sterile. I have not yet found a single earthworm in my yard. No, not one. You would think that land that would support cockroaches would support worms, wouldn't you. Well, that's gonna change. I've been faithfully blending kitchen scraps in the blender and dumping
them out there, and I got 25 bags of mix & mulch from the nursery, along with three more bags of cocoa hulls (so we can smell like chocolate.)
I have a call in to Bro. Alvarez, who owes me some work, but haven't reached him yet. I have the pipe all ready for him to trench for new sprinklers. We may survive this project yet.
Fri Oct 05 2001 18:35:
Wheee! The tractor guys are done. They ripped out the old dead lawn (thatch was about 6 inches thick!) and scraped and leveled the yard, blending in thetruckload of steer manure the missionaries spread for me. They yanked out the old nonfunctional) sprinkler system, which was patched together with-- can you believe it?--- electrical conduit. Bzzzzzt. They piled all the extra dirt (from fishpond and sidewalk excavation that the YM did) into nicely shaped landscape
mounds and placed my new granite boulders thereon. They also hauled off a dump truck load of junque from the back yard.