Operation: Dirt Donation

An article by Rachel    Comments Off

If you’ve spent any extended time around me, chances are you’ve heard me complain about the 20-year old compost pile in out backyard. It’s the one part of the backyard excavation experience that we couldn’t resolve on our own. We just didn’t have a place to go with the dirt.

Sunday at dinner with my family, we were explaining our dilemma. The dirt is nice good dirt. We just didn’t want to dump it at the dump. I mean someone somewhere has to need a lot of good dirt. Luckily, my parent’s neighbor’s needed a lot of dirt for a huge flower plot they’ve started. So this morning at 7 am, I picked up my brother, Moses, and the trailer and headed back to our house.

This is what we started with:

Within minutes, Ross and Moses broke ground.

I can’t believe I didn’t get any pictures of the trailer full of dirt. After filling the trailer the first time, we took the dirt to the lucky recipients. Unfortunately for us, the lucky recipients had a family obligation. So we got to fill up their planter box without their help. Trip #1 was followed by a trip to the dump and a second trip from our house to the lucky recipients.

While we really would have liked a bit more help, we were happy to do it, because we now have level ground. By the way, I should really point out that without my brother’s and my parent’s help, the dirt donation project would be wishful thinking on our part. Thanks!

Now this really should have been enough activity for one weekend, but we decided to tackle one more project. Since we moved into out house, there has been a cast iron table sitting on our patio. We couldn’t move it. It didn’t have wheels, and it was too heavy to move. On Sunday, I almost had Ross talked into getting rid of the table. I wanted the patio back. Well, Ross decided it was just too useful to get rid of. So he found some extra-heavy-duty casters, and we set about to install them.

And here it is with out leaves, dirt, and spider webs.

And even better, it fits nicely into the shed.

And even better than that, we have reclaimed out patio. Now I want to find two adirondack chairs with a cute little side table. Any inexpensive ideas?