To the moon!!!

Well, not really.  But the ground around the house looks a lot like the surface of the moon!  Or so I think.  After a handful of days of tilling, scraping, raking, scooping, piling, and loads of dirt being taken away, we are left with these tracks all around the house.  The stump has now been completely annihilated after additional pieces were found buried under the bark and the grinder guy had to come back 2 extra times!!  So by the end of last week we had: in one part of the yard a big pile of bark, and in the rest of the yard hard-packed dirt with roots and rocks scattered about. 

After a hard day of labor on Sunday, Jay and I managed to create one last, very large, pile of debris from the yard.  Jay finished up the edging around the fence line and parking strips and we raked out as many rocks and roots as we could. 

Tuesday morning the new dirt arrived!  Now, I know it seems a little counterproductive to throw away a bunch of dirt, only to bring different dirt in.  But this dirt is better!  The first load arrived about 7:30 am yesterday.  The guy drove right up over the curb and into the front yard to dump about 15 yards of dirt right in front of the main window.  I managed to get out of there just a few minutes before the next truck came with another 15 yards.  Over the course of the day a total of 4 loads of dirt, equalling approximately 120,000 pounds, were spread around the house.  Jay worked with the same gentleman who did the tilling to move dirt and layer it as evenly as possible.  It was an amazing sight when I got home from work yesterday!  I will post a picture soon of the former stump spot - it's like that beast never existed!!! 

We will probably need a little more dirt in the near future to build up berms around the outer edge of the yard, but for now we have a great foundation.  The remainder of this week will bring fence work and, hopefully, seed planting!  One day in the very near future I will be able to walk in the backyard and not have smelly chickens staring me down from the neighbor's yard!!  Now that's something to celebrate!!