But it’s slowly getting there, and slowly growing together again. We set the mower to its highest setting (4 inches), and are going to be taking another pass this week to get it a little lower. It almost got wild on us for a second there, but it’s really starting to look like a true and actual lawn.
It’s a Honda 21 in. 3-in-1 Variable Speed Mower (disclaimer: Amazon Affiliate link), but it definitely didn’t cost quite as much as what this link shows. More like half, actually.
Yesterday after work, Liz made a really terrible discovery: we have visitors in our yard. Despite the tremendous amount of weeds and soil that was removed from our backyard, we have some uninvited guests poking through the sod.
When the yard was still half-uncovered, I asked if they were planning on returning tomorrow. I found out that they were intending to finish today – and in under an hour, the rest of the yard was covered in sod!
After a few weather delays last week, today a new crew from our landscaper (Christy Webber) showed up as we were leaving for work. They had a lot of soil with them, along with a Bobcat – and this is what we found on returning home.
Waking up this morning, we saw that the heavy, overnight rains ended up leaving a fairly large puddle in the middle of our yard. We’d seen some pooling here after we first started to water the yard… but last night’s rain made things much more pronounced.
It’s super early, and though I’m tired – it’s nice to have something that forces me out of bed. I haven’t been able to resume my habit of getting up to work in the early hours, so maybe the new watering routine will shift my schedule up some. There’s a bit of rain in the forecast, but I expect to be doing this early rising for the next two weeks at least.
This is a rather big file (2.2MB), but does show the whole progress of our backyard: from the clearing to the leveling to the sod installation. The first few photos are a little off, but I did try to take photos from the same vantage point during the sod install part.
It’s been a long two days of work, and a remarkable four days of change. Considering how things looked Thursday, it’s hard to believe. I think we’re lucky to have this bench, because for the foreseeable future… every time I get back here, I’m going to be blown away. And will need to sit down, to marvel at it all.
Unfortunately, the forklift was bigger than a bobcat… and couldn’t make it down the driveway. So he left all four palettes of our sod near the front. We kind of knew this might happen, so it just means more transport and moving around for us.
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).
As Liz and I were watching, we kept shaking our heads – remembering how long it took to clear just a little bit ourselves.
Tonight, after work, Liz and I stepped out on the back porch and took one last look at the backyard. It’s a crazy, overgrown mess… but all of that changes, in less than 24 hours.
This is after a few hours. It was slow going, and the concrete actually ran much deeper than I anticipated. There’s actually a layer of brick underneath everything, and I was pulling up chunks that were several inches thick.
Liz did the math for how much mulch we’ll need for the backyard (we’re keeping a 3′ gap between the yard and the fence). All told, we’ll need 22 bags – so we decided to split things up into multiple runs.