So Much Dirt

I fondly remember climbing on "mountains" of sand when I was a kid & they were building new homes in my neighborhood.

We're still in the process of fixing up our backyard - new large slab poured, fence in the process of going in, & right now we're building up our yard. We have a huge decline in our backyard so we had 18 yards of fill dirt dumped in our driveway on Friday.

There were three solid days with a forecast of a 0% chance of rain. Three days to move all of that dirt to our backyard.

The weather forecast turned out to be completely wrong & it rained all afternoon on Saturday. Wet dirt is very heavy. 

With fears that the HOA may come knocking or our vehicles may get towed for being parked in the street  (not allowed in our county) we skipped church on Sunday in order to move the dirt.

As of Monday we've made some decent progress. We've move 4-5 of the 18 yards. It's feels like a much greater accomplishment than it sounds. My muscles are achy like crazy but I kind of like it.

Unfortunately, the way the homes in our neighbor hood are built the side yards hold a lot of water & can't hold the weight of machinery. Between that & the cost of renting equipment, it means we're shoveling all of this by hand & moving it with wheelbarrows.

On Saturday morning I arrived home from grocery shopping to a big truck parked in front of our house. It was Kathy, the manager from starbucks, delivering a wheelbarrow for us to borrow! She'd seen my post on Facebook about our huge pile of dirt & thought we could use it. It's been such a blessing! We borrowed another one from another friend in our neighborhood so while I fill one wheelbarrow Ray hauls the second one to the backyard. 

The kids have been having a great time climbing & getting dirty!

With every few inches of dirt it has to be tamped down. We're building at a 3/8 inch decline - we still have about two more layers to go until we reach the height we need for the yard & can lay sod.