Columbus

The much anticipated day is FINALLY here! I am getting a front yard!!!

Let me take you back in time....
I got home very late on the night of Wednesday, January 17, 2o07....
The tree roots in my front yard had pressed down on the sewer lines long enough and the line had collapsed. Resulting in a very bad situation in my finished basement (office & laundry room).

I had 5 hours until my morning flight to Durham for a game at Duke the next day.


Thank God for my wonderful friends Patty & Dave - they handled the "situation" while I went to work the next day.



A new sewer line was put in the following week.

But the saga didn't end there.



And when I say saga, that is NO exaggeration!



A little piece of advice... never pick a contractor (of any kind) from a cute logo in the yellow pages!


LONG story short... the company I hired did not pull the proper permits with the city. They also made a mistake, resulting in a water line leak. Therefore, the city made them tear up the yard again to make the proper repairs. The company then tried to bill me for the additional days of work. Ha!




This 1 day project turned into 7 months of HELL!

This is what I got to see everytime I came home for months to come.

A constant reminder of a bad decision made, based on clip art of a rat in the yellow pages.


It took endless calls and complaints to the BBB, Angie's List and the Ohio Attorney General.
At long last, it was the OAG who finally was able to get it straightened out.



Needless to I was left with no grass. Basically a mud pit for a front yard.

Because my yard gets no sun, growing grass is not an easy task. I had grand plans of having a landscaping company doing it for me - but I chickened out of the large investment at the last minute. Which in hindsight, was the right choice, considering a client at that time went out of business a few weeks later and didn't pay me the $8,000 they owed me. But that's a whole other story in itself!

Flash forward to today.

These are the weed patches that I had learned to live with...

Much research and planning by Dave, Roger and myself. We were ready!

Earlier this week, I had $500 worth of dirt delivered.

A semi backed up and "slung" the dirt across the yard - it was actually really cool!

And there was some to spare...


Dave, Roger and I got it all spread out evenly and then seeded.


After seeding, we laid out these rolls of "germination blankets" - it looked and felt like shredded wheat.

Then we came up with a watering system...

Which led to hours and hours of me trying to get the timers to go off at the correct times. Along with constant rearranging of the sprinklers to ensure all the areas were getting water. That in itself took a week.

And now the waiting....

(It's the hardest part ya know!)