And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Monday was a massive yard cleanup day. Massive. Lets see, we had to mow some long dead grass that obviously died like that last year, rake the entire yard, do some preliminary weeding, and spread 2.5 cubic yards of material in strategic places. Do you know how many wheelbarrows 2.5 cubic yards is? LOTS. Luckily, J had half of it done before I even came home from work, and it still took us three hours to finish.
By the time I came home the raised bed was proudly filled with premium gardening soil – the kind that comes premixed with compost and manure. J was on the couch taking a break and as soon as I walked it he switched into drill sergeant mode ‘C’mon lets go, we have to finish all this tonight’. The urgency was compounded by the fact that there was rain promised for tomorrow, so everything we didn’t clean today would become a muddy messy pile of heavy… wait for it… clay. Or at least clay like substance. And trust me, after stripping the sod off for the bed no one wanted to touch clay or mud with a ten foot pole.
lots of wheelbarrows...
So off to work we went. Rake, mow, haul, swear at the gale force wind, haul, spread, weed, remove old mulch, haul and rake. Three hours of it. And internet, this is one prime example of why men can be so very handy, despite their many obvious flaws. They work faster. And are stronger. Which means that anything we did, I contributed about thirty percent to. Not in effort mind you, just in results. No matter how you look at it J can haul more, spread further, and finish everything faster than I ever could. If I had to do it all alone it would take me a weekend. And I would likely do what I usually do, and call in reinforcements.
When all the excess soil was in a nice pile waiting to become a strawberry bed, and there was still a ton of compost left, we started playing a fun game called Let’s See How Much Compost We Can Dump in Each Flower Bed. It had to go somewhere, the lawn was covered with a nice thin, loosely raked layer, and the rain was still a threat. So each flower bed got an obscene amount of compost – 2-4 inches worth. It sure looked good – covered up any remaining weeds and debris, gave a nice groomed appearance to each bed, and it has to be good for them, right? Then it was a huge pile of garbage to disperse, grass clippings in a compost pile, weeds in a garbage bag, tools to put away, sweeping of bricks to be done, and finally, exhausted we collapsed on the couch smelling faintly of manure.
post-compost, pre-sweeping
And the rain? Never happened.