Look What's Happening Here!

In The Trenches

This week's project (and last week's) has been focused on installing the sprinkler system.  Last week we had a skid steer with a trencher attached come dig all the trench lines.  That was a comedy of errors in itself, given crazy weather that included 75 MPH wind gusts, hail the size of quarters, and flash floods. At one point the poor tractor guy gave up on the day as he had been sitting in his truck, waiting for the lightening to pass.  Apparently Big Open Field + Metal Tractor + Lightning = Bad Idea.

The trenches were finally finished, but the flash floods that came the next day washed dirt/mud back into a lot of the trenches.  Plus there were some areas that were too tight to get the trencher where it needed to go.  Enter hand-trenching.  Lots and lots of it.  Actually, I worked so hard that I sprained my wrist - not from any one impact, but from digging over and over and over.  I've been on the injured list for the past three days, which just means even more digging for Brian and Biniam.

Good news is, the trenching is now about 96% done, and a lot of the pipe is already in the trenches.  Next is (and don't quote me on this) installing the sprinkler heads and a valve box or something.  Brian's goal is to have the water turned on by Saturday.  We will see!

This shows about one sixth of the yard, and the trenches only get closer together in the front yard.

Also, you can get a little sneak peek of some of our trees here.  The one closest to Brian is a Linden, then there is a Sycamore way in the distance near the playground, and even further out along the fence are seven Hackberries, which will provide wind-protection and privacy - bye bye blue trailer!

Looking straight out the back door, you can see that the blue house behind us is disappearing as all the foliage comes in.  And if you look really, really close, you can see our ten fruit trees planted along that fence.

Such a handsome, hard-worker!

Holes!

Has anyone else seen the movie Holes?  I'm pretty sure it has Sigourney Weaver in it, and that's all I remember, other than some kids digging some random holes out in the desert.

We had our own version of that painful movie last weekend.  On Saturday, Brian and I went to a local tree auction.  It's a wholesale nursery that sells larger-than-average trees, and twice a year they get rid of a bunch of trees at once by hosting an auction.  It was crazy fun, and we ended up purchasing 12 trees!  There was a catch though.  All trees had to be picked up by Sunday afternoon.  And the trees are so big, you can't exactly transport and move them yourself.  Believe me.  We tried.

We borrowed a friend's pickup truck, and another friend's utility trailer.  When the guys at the nursery went to load our trees into the trailer with a skid steer, they quickly realized only two of the trees would fit in the trailer at a time.  Brian drove the trees onto our property right next to where we wanted to plant them.  Brian, Biniam and I then attempted to unload the trees.  They. Wouldn't. Budge.  Like not even an inch.  We were screwed.  We had ten more trees to pick up, two that were stuck on the trailer, not to mention twelve giant holes to dig.

Our backup plan was to call the guy who we were buying our boulders from, have him deliver the boulders on Sunday, then pick up the trees for us, and come place the trees in our pre-dug holes.  At 5:00 PM on Saturday we connected with "our guy" and made arrangements for him to come deliver our trees at 8:00 Sunday morning.  At this point we were starting on our third hole, and had also just found out our first two holes were too small.

Did I mention we were screwed?

We sent out the SOS, and by about 7:00 PM we had two friends-with-shovels helping us out.  By dark, I think we had 8 1/2 holes dug.  It's a bit blurry to me now, but late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, we got grace as Our Guy called and said it would be closer to noon.  Good thing, because we also realized that not only did we have to be ready for our trees, but since he was first dropping off our boulders, we would need to be ready for them, too.  Which meant creating a raised berm for some of the boulders to sit on.

Oh...my...word.  We were digging and hacking and scooping and wheelbarrow-ing so fast.  One neighbor saw what we were doing with the dirt-moving, and came over and dropped off his 4-wheeler with a trailer.  That helped a LOT.

We were just working on the last tree hole when Our Guy pulled up with our rocks.  He unloaded the rocks, placed them were they needed to go, then took off with Brian to get our trees, while Biniam and I finished up the last hole.

Have I mentioned that these holes were about six feet across and three feet deep?

Everything went smoothly with delivering the trees and placing each one in each hole with the tractor.  And our holes were just the right size!

Next up, pictures of our trees.  Although they aren't very photogenic right now without their leaves.

Yard Kick-Off!

 The weather here the past three weekends has included the following.  Temps in the 70's, temps in the 30's, rain, snow, sun, crazy wind, rain, and rain.  And wind.  All that combined makes for some sporadic yard work.  But we're on a schedule.  We have to get going on getting a yard put in.  For one, we owe it to our neighbors, who have had to stare at this dirt-and-weed fest for the past four years.  Also, we have to work in the spring while the conditions are favorable for things like planting grass and trees.  And speaking of trees, we have two weekends until a big local tree auction where we are hoping to get a lot of, well, trees.  And we need to be ready for them.

First thing on the agenda was correctly preparing our storm-water-drainage ditch.  County code requires that we have a ditch at the front of our property, lined with stones, that leads into the community retention pond (which is in the front corner of our property).  At the time we purchased our house, there were no rocks in our "ditch", and the dirt barely sloped down, so we had a lot of work to do.

Our first weekend was spent digging.  And digging.  It had poured rain the night before, so we were digging in heavy mud.  Did you know that mud is really heavy?  And sticky.  In fact when we would tip our shovel to get the dirt mud off of it, it wouldn't budge.  So we'd have to slam the shovel against a rock.  It was slow. going.  And also back-breaking.  That was Saturday.  It snowed on Sunday, and we were thankful for the break.

The next weekend we finished the digging and also started moving some of the rocks.  The rocks on average weighed probably 20-pounds each.  Some more, some less.  Each one was moved by hand.  In fact, I can probably say with confidence that I personally touched 99.9% of the rocks, either from moving them myself, or rearranging them once they were in the ditch.  I still have rock-shaped bruises up my arms, legs, and feet to prove it.

But look!  See how pretty it is now!  It's one of those jobs where the hard work paid off and had something to show for it.  And even better, the day after we finally finished, we got a heavy rain which proved our ditch works, as the water ran through it and into the pond.  Yay!

We still have some excavation work to do in the pond, which is why there are still some piles of rocks (on the right) and dirt (at the top).

Another project the last few weekends has been to try and get the weed situation under control.  We started by burning the piles of dry brush we had all over the yard.  That was pretty fun, and for a bit felt like we were actually ranchers.

 Please note Noah's choice of hand-protection.  On the left he has a green gardening glove.  And on the right, a baby-blue snow mitten.

We were also going to torch the weeds around the rest of the yard, which were mostly dried from last year.  But then the flood rains came, and suddenly everything greened right up.

Green Weeds + Fire Torch = Still Green Weeds.

We are going to have to resort to an application of Round Up (gasp!) on all the weeds before they really get out of hand.  I am reluctant to do that, as I want to keep things as organic as possible, but with an acre of thick weeds, it's pretty much the only feasible option.

Our last project that we started yesterday, is digging the hole for our trampoline to go in-ground.  It took  us all afternoon yesterday to get things measured and staked off so we knew exactly where we wanted to dig.  But the timing couldn't come soon enough, as this is what happened to our trampoline on Saturday after some crazy winds.

The trampoline used to be right-side up (go figure!) and in front of the little step-ladder, about 40-feet to the right of where it is now.  So this whole trampoline-in-the-ground thing is turning out to be not only for looks.

And finally, moments after we staked off the will-be play area, we found an awesome play set on craigslist.  So tonight we will be picking up our new (used) Rainbow play set.  And of course we will need to put it back together, and stain it.......the projects never cease!

Fail

I am completely failing today at homeschooling.  Actually, probably this whole week.  The weather is unusually crummy.  The time change has us moving very slow in the mornings.  And I'm on round two of antibiotics for Strep throat.

I suppose the good that is coming out of it, is I am thinking about how to mix things up a bit, and what we can do better.  I had a "meeting" with the kids this morning and asked if there was anything they wish we were studying or that they could learn.

Here are their ideas:

Learn more Sign Language
Learn to read Braille
Learn to write Cursive
Learn to speak Amharic
Learn how to knit without a loom
Learn all the states in America

I think this is a great start and will keep us busy for a while!  Emma is pacing ahead of schedule on her four core-subjects, so I think it would be great to work a couple of these things into our schedule now, and then add the rest next year.

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In other news, it is time for us to get going on our yard.  And by "yard", I mean the dirt-and-weeds-that-need-to-become-a-yard.

We have to start by burning all the dead brush all over the yard.  We bought a torch last night.  According to our Yard Schedule we have to get the burning done this weekend.  Except it's been raining all week.  So here's to burning wet weeds.

There is a tree auction in April that we are hoping to get some great deals at.  So everything needs to be ready before the auction, so we can put the trees in the ground when we get them.  After burning, we need to use a tractor to clear the dirt of all rocks, and do the final grade.  We also need to dig all the holes for all the trees and shrubs.  And install the sprinkler lines ourselves.  And dig a giant hole for our trampoline.  And have boulders delivered.

After all that, we can get started on the actual yard -- planting grass, creating beds, planting flowers and shrubs, installing weed barrier, landscape rock......it goes on and on.  I'm excited.  Or I want to cry.

We heard a rumor that the previous homeowner got a bid to install just the sprinklers, for $5000.  Yeah, that's more than our entire yard budget for the year.  We'll see what we can do!


Here are a couple shots of our backyard, from the back patio.  It's been crazy windy lately, which is why the trampoline looks like that.

A few weeks ago, we didn't have any green weeds.  Thanks to the rain and warmer weather, we have crops of them.

 Lots of work cut out for us!