Our Garden, Part II

The weekend after we returned from Spokane, our friend John and his little boy Kaiden came over to help us get rid of some of the dirt in our backyard. We accumulated quite a large pile of it when Michael was putting in the French drain, and there was just too much of it to spread around the yard. Besides that, the dirt is really more like clay and isn't any good for gardening.

The boys got to work with shovels and worked up a sweat filling our wheelbarrow, then emptying it into the trailer that Michael and his dad built years ago. Michael and John had spent a previous weekend reusing old boards from our deck to build sides for the trailer, so the clay-dirt was well contained and ready for a trip to the dump.

Kaiden had fun helping me water the garden and running back and forth along the boards that were the improvised wheelbarrow ramp.

When the boys came back from the dump, they said they'd been surprised to learn exactly how heavy the load was--5,000 pounds or over two tons of dirt!! They were, in fact, 1,000 pounds over the recommended limit for the trailer, but didn't find that out until the truck was weighed at the dump. They both attributed the extra weight to water trapped in the clay-dirt.

It was nice to see the yard without the huge pile of dirt. Now on to building the new deck!