As you may or may not know, three years ago, Clint and I bought a two-year old house. Here in Utah, when most people build a house, they move in first, and then put in their yard. The original owners of our house never got around to that part, so when we moved in, there was no yard, just a lot of dirt, and rocks.
-Well, no more.-
I'm happy to report that as of last Friday, July 15th, we finally have grass!
Putting in a yard with minimal hired help is a long tiring process. We tried to do as much as we could by ourselves.
Clint and my dad started in April moving rocks and installing the sprinkler system.
After doing as much as we could on our own, we had to hire out the rest. Someone to pour cement, build a couple of rock walls, bring in topsoil and grade the yard, and finally, someone to curb around the flowerbeds.
Here in Utah, the housing market is booming. We called 100's of landscapers who never called us back, and those that we were able to get a hold of were booked out for weeks/months. I'm an impatient person. When I'm ready for something, I want it right now. This was a hard wait for me. Finally, bit by bit, over the course of three months, we were able to get everything done.
After months of waiting, once things got started, everything seemed to happen all at once, and almost too quickly.
On Monday the topsoil people finished. Tuesday the "Curber" came. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday we (and when I say we, I mean Clint) installed 1,567,899 sprinkler heads.
In fact, we were up until 3 am most nights trying to get everything done and ready for sod.
Our neighbors were awesome and also helped.
We had one neighbor that came over every night to help. Our other neighbor stayed up late combing the dirt to make it smooth and remove any rocks.
Speaking of sod, it was scheduled to be delivered Friday night, and we would install it Saturday just in time for the return of our three older children who were attending a church youth conference.
WRONG!
The sod trucks pulled up a little after 5:30 am Friday morning (Who needs sleep?)!
There was no way we could keep the sod outside in the heat and sun all day long, so after going back to bed for a couple of hours, Clint and I began laying sod.
We had some awesome helpers. The first to arrive was a sweet neighbor lady, no bigger than me, who came with her two children. Together we carried the large HEAVY (who knew grass could weigh so much) pieces of sod over to Clint who then put them in place. We worked for over two hours and finally finished the smallest section of the entire yard before muscle fatigue set in and lifting another piece of sod was impossible.
When I was wondering how we were possibly going to lay 20 more pallets of sod, more neighbors showed up to help -This time men!
They kept coming and coming and before I knew it, there were 10 men out there taking time away from their family to help us lay sod. Each came on their own without being asked.
We were so grateful.
When we began laying the sod, we noticed that there were a lot of unusable dry crumbly pieces that fell apart when you went to pick them up. This was not good. We knew we had ordered a little bit extra (a little cushion), but with all this bad sod, we wouldn't be able to finish the entire yard, and would have to wait (ugh! that waiting game I "love" so much) for more to be delivered.
Somehow, even with several pallets-ful of unusable sod, we had just enough -just enough- to complete the yard. It was a miracle!
At the end of the day, as we sat on the patio looking out over our new yard eating Cafe Rio (that a thoughtful friend brought us), we were dirty and exhausted, but happy and very very grateful.