Clearing the Wilderness: Backyard Transformation, Day 2

Today was a little more subdued. Though the bobcat came back for more clearing, there were only two workers (as opposed to the five we had yesterday).

There wasn’t a ton of activity throughout the day. I heard voices, but there were also large spaces of time where things were pretty quiet.

The yard, still messy with leaves and roots and branches.

By the end of the day though, things were pretty cleared up.

Looking over at the neighbor’s yard (they opted to keep a perimeter, along the fence – as well as a 25 section from the back).

Looking down, from our porch.

Ground level.

Looking back towards the house.

The one small issue we have is that we never got to talk with the workers, prior to them packing up and leaving. The topsoil is a little dry (and in several areas, there are some hard, rock-like clumps that are difficult to break apart, even by hand).

The yard is mostly even, though it does grade towards the center of the yard… and seems to come back towards the house more than we really wanted. The grading was kind of a quick conversation, and it wasn’t really clear to us whether we were telling the right person about our preferences.

But – beyond these issues, it really is night and day, as far as what we had and what we have. Liz and I walked along the yard as the sun set, marveling at all the clear space.

// Edit: I should mention that a few days later, after seeing water pooling up in the yard… we gave Christy Webber a call back and told them about the situation. We asked them to return and re-evaluate the yard, and some folks stopped by a few days later.

They confirmed that the yard was not graded properly, and scheduled a date to return to fix the leveling. This work will entail them pulling up the sod, adding more soil, moving the low point further towards the center of the yard, and then replacing all the sod. All at no charge to us.

Really happy with this outcome, and continue to be extremely happy with the service we’ve experienced from Christy Webber.

We did find a few roots that we tried to pull up ourselves. Here, Liz tries really hard while I do nothing except take a photo.

We set up some string and some stakes, marking out some lines for our sod installation. Since our south fence is really wavy and bowed, there was no way we could use it as a consistent point of measurement/reference.

Instead, we ran a line down the center of the yard, and made two other perpendicular lines. It ended up being pretty helpful, when we started to do the sod (the next day).

Liz and I had a long talk over dinner, after setting the lines up. We tend to have difficulty working together on complex tasks, but we found that if we discuss things ahead of time… we end up mitigating a lot of those points of friction.

We talked about the sod install process, and everything we were looking to do. It’s been a big two days of change at the house, and a lot of work by others. Tomorrow, it’ll be time for us to roll up our sleeves… and quite literally get our hands very, very dirty.

Related:
Clearing the Wilderness: Backyard Transformation, Day 1
Yardwork, and the Slow Realization That It’s Going to Take a Really, Really Long Time
Backyard Tree Removal: Before and After Photos