Grassy Saturday

When we first moved into our house nine years ago (geez, has it been that long!?) we were coming from apartment life and were very excited to do things that only home-owners get to do like grow our own vegetables.

Our first summer in our new home brought a bountiful harvest to carrots, cabbage, beans, peas, and all kinds of other stuff that we don't actually like to eat but sure looked cool out there growing in neat little rows.

In the past several years, out family has grown and our distaste for the things we could grow has remained constant. That being paired with our inability to leave well enough alone helped us to decide to rip out all of our raised garden beds this year and go with the basic grass look. The intent is to make the yard more kid-friendly, giving us more room to play catch and run in the sprinklers and at the same time decreasing time spent on maintenance.

We (and by we, I mean me) have spent a couple of Saturdays in the yard ripping out the rotting landscape timbers and leveling the ground to make way for the new grass. This past Saturday morning, we had two heaping pallets of sod delivered (1,000 square feet total).


Valerie being "with child" was out of the running to help with this work since it was mostly heavy lifting. She has fantastic timing with these things. She took over the task of keeping Ben out of our way which trust me is not as simple as it might seem.

The dream-team for sod installation consisted of Sarah and me. We rented a big lawn roller, from Home Depot and knocked a lot of the work out really fairly quickly. The areas that were well-prepared were a cinch. We did slow down a bit when I got to some places that still needed a lot of work and in particular a place where I had to dig out a huge root ball where our once giant forsythia stood.

I don’t think Sarah was having a great time but she stuck it out and is a fantastic worker. As the sod was laid out, I kept making the joke that all the grass reminded me of my Irish boyhood but she didn’t really think it was funny or even get it.

We finished laying about a pallet and a half of sod before the skies really opened up and it started pouring rain. The rain was great for the stuff that was already on the ground but not so great for the laborers as out clothes got wetter and wetter while the sod got heavier and heavier. We eventually had to call it quits and will tackle the remainder of the work sometime hopefully this evening. Hopefully we will enjoy a great summer our new spacious lawn.