Reality

Last year I began making plans to overhaul my front yard – I wrote about it here. I ordered my plants months ago and made arrangements to pick them up on May 27^th.  This weekend – all three days – I was planning to get the yard ready for planting.  The weekend is over and I’m not finished the prep work.

First, I had a list of little things that could be done on evenings and weekends before the May long weekend – very few of them got done ahead of time so that made my weekend ‘to do’ list even longer.  Three days were probably not going to be enough to get all the work done. Then there were a few other obstacles.

Friday evening there was a thunderstorm.  That was really not a bad thing because if there had not been a storm I would have probably wanted to plunge right into the yard work with only a few hours of daylight left.  A few hours of work is just enough for me to really get ‘into’ the job and I wouldn’t have wanted to stop.

The real setback was the full day of steady rain on Saturday so no yard work got done that day.  The day wasn’t completely wasted – I got a lot of paperwork done.  I finished work on the 2013 resource calendar and sent it off to MCCA for final edit so that big job is completed – early.  However, the yard renovation was way behind schedule.

On Sunday the weather was absolutely perfect for doing yard work.  Dealing with canker worms was the only issue.  We may have gotten a lot of work done but even though I skipped a meal or two I didn’t want ‘protein’ added to my coffee.  My husband suggested that we should patent my fancy cup covers (empty plastic containers turned upside down).

By Monday morning I had already realized that there was no chance that the yard work would be complete.  It was a good thing that I hadn’t ordered soil to be delivered for the garden beds because I wasn’t even close to having the gravel moved out of the way yet.

My husband and I dug up and relocated 18 small and medium sized sidewalk blocks to make room for the new flower beds.  Then we made a horrifying discovery – ten years ago, when we put all this gravel and sidewalk in, we put it over the original sidewalk.  We had forgotten that it was there so now we were staring at three 30” x 36” slabs of concrete that were four inches thick!  I was certain that my native prairie plants would not be happy if we just put soil over those slabs.  We would have to take them out.

While we worked on our yard there were many real estate agents and prospective buyers coming to view the house next door. I struggled with trying to be friendly without coming across as the nosy neighbour. Wielding a sledge hammer I may have come across as crazy.  I had an enjoyable conversation with one woman until our husbands interrupted us.  Maybe she was crazy too – I liked her.

We got one concrete slab removed before the rain returned and we quit working. The whole project may have been too big for two people to complete in three days.  It was definitely too much for the 1 ½ days of good weather that we had.  It is not complete, the reality is – it is a work in progress.