A Long and Demanding Day

Looking east, all that dark brown area is new soil.That's what I did yesterday.
This area is not yet seeded. I will seed it today.

This is looking south; the closest part is seeded. The light brown areas
have not got the soil on them yet.

I thoroughly enjoyed landscaping yesterday—putting the land to sleep for winter under a nice fresh blanket of healthy soil and plentiful seed (so there’s enough for both my lawn and the birds that come to eat it). It goes fairly quickly for as long as I can muster energy. 

But that’s the problem: Energy. I get incredibly hot partly because of the ambient temperature, party because I’m laboring and partly the impact of direct sunlight on me when I’m loading the soil. Unfortunately, I had a deadline of my own making—the second load of soil arriving this morning—or I could have left some of the work for today. But I felt that I couldn’t stop.

In a pile, six cubic yards does not look like very much. Spread on the ground, it looks much more impressive (see above). My arms, shoulders and wrist felt like they’d moved a metaphorical mountain. 

I started at 10:30. By 2:00 pm I was beat, and still had a long  way to go. At 3:00, I was thinking of myself as a new superhero: Not The Terminator, but The Terminated. I took a half-hour break … by then it was 27°. 

By 4:30, after only another hour of work, my desire to quit was as strong as my determination to keep going. I was human pulp. I showered and got into clean clothes; to make myself feel better. I had a break, of course, cooling off in front of the fan and then I went back to do as much more as I could stand to do.

And I did it all! I knew I would. I finished at 6:00.

I reckon the one load has done a little over a third of the yard; I’ll likely need about $1,300 worth of soil. I’m okay with that though. This is my last ‘grand scale’ hurrah at Pinecone Park. From now on: Little yays. I

 suspect that when the lawn comes in I’ll look back at my financial concerns with scorn. I anticipate being as thrilled with the new lawn as I was with the front lawn. (I planted the front lawn at this time last year.)

It’s cloudy and gloomy this morning and it’s only 11°! I won’t be sweating as I work today. I plan to do as much as I can this weekend—both laying soil and seed—because it’s predicted to be cool and damp all week and that’s great news for a newly laid lawn.

Tonight I go to the Farm-to-Table feast with Jay, François and Eoin. Hooray! Time to party!