First cut

After a long and stressful week at work, I left early today and came home to cut my lawn for the first time. It's not the US open, but its pretty good for an amateur and only a month in.

work day

The weather has been rainy for the whole week, and today was the first warm and sunny day that we've had. So today I spread some fertilizer on the yard, pulled up the last on the burlap and ran the roller over the whole yard one last time. Below are some before and after pictures for your viewing pleasure.

Before

After

growing grass

I had intended to chronicle all the effort into bringing in 75 yards of topsoil, leveling it out, and preparing it for grass seed etc. But i never got around to it. Instead, here are some pictures of the progression of the land.

before topsoil

The first seedling -- one week after planting

A view from today -- one week afer the first seedling popped up

End of rock farming

My yard raking days are nearly over. Today the guys from Hamlin construction came by and hauled away my collection and took it over to a job site a few houses down. Their help, and bobcat, are greatly appreciated. Here are the before and after photos.

Curby

The girls absolutely loved the 2.5 tons of sand that was delivered, must have been like Christmas for them. I must say that I do have an excellent group of friends! This last weekend we laid down curbing around the house and created a tree ring in the front. This required almost 30 hours of preparation time by me mostly consisting of try to level and compact the ground where the curbing would go, and only 5 hours to install all the curbing and clean up all of the equipment. As with most home improvement projects it seems as though the prep work is both the hardest and the most important. Now to the part that you really want to see, the pictures!

It is finished!

And now I can say that I've installed a sprinkler system. Finished all the electrical and some miscellaneous drip work. It feels so good to be finished.

Testing complete

Today I got all of the pipes flushed out and all of the nozzles and heads in place and roughly set for their zones. I must admin despite the cold it was fun being sprayed by the sprinklers as I ran around the hard to and from the valve box. Now all that remains is a little bit of prep work on the drip lines and wiring.