TRENCH WARFARE
Cindy Maddera
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I have alternate titles for this post. “That Time We Re-enacted WWI” and “Never Start A Construction Project with A Math Teacher” are good alternate titles. Both pretty much sum up this project. That picture up there is the west side of our house. That ever growing pile of dirt is in our neighbor’s driveway. Michael has promised to power wash their driveway when (if ) we finish this thing. There used to be a retaining wall where that trench is now. That retaining wall was made of old railroad ties and the top one just fell off one day. The wheels and cogs started turning inside Michael’s head and now we have two pallets of stone, half a pallet of sand, and a pile of rocks sitting in front of our garage door. After digging out the old railroad ties, we then had to dig a new trench for the stone wall that is(?) going to replace them. And digging that trench has definitely been an adventure.
Not only is our soil full of clay, but we also had to contend with rebar left over from the railroad ties, two old fence posts that had been cut at ground level (Surprise fence post!), and some ridiculously sized roots from a dead tree in our neighbor’s yard. Every time Michael pulled a rebar free from the ground, he declared himself King of England and started reciting Monty Python. There was a tree root about as big around as my leg transversely crossing our trench that Michael had to cut out with a chainsaw. We came across another similar root, but this one was rotting and soggy. It broke apart in spongy pieces that I inspected with great curiosity and even said something like “I’d like to put a section of this in a petri dish and inspect the fungus that is growing in here.” Michael replied “Do I need to build you a lab in the basement?” You can take the girl out of the science lab, but you can’t take the science lab out of the girl. We dug through layers and layers of clay and probably have enough clay to make a new set of dishes, but we did it.
Finally, after three rounds of reciting Monty Python and The Holy Grail and a whole story about a man slowly digging his way out of prison and escaping two weeks before his release at age 97, we finished our digging. The next step is to tamp down our trench and then lay down some ground cloth. Then, we fill with gravel and tamp, check to make sure everything is level, add sand and tamp, check to make sure everything is level, add a layer of pavers, check to make sure everything is level. Well…you get the idea. While Michael is obsessing over levelness, I will be loading the wheel barrow up with all of the dirt we’ve excavated and then distributing that dirt around the perimeter of the house so we can re-grade for drainage. That is a whole other project that will involve digging out and replacing all of the window wells around the basement windows and mulch. Lots and lots of mulch.
Homeownership is a scam.
This morning, I’m catching up on Killing Eve and nursing my soar wrists and swollen hands. I discovered last night that sleeping on my back causes my right hand to go numb. It has something to do with my shoulder blades and all of the shoveling. I have already called my Mom to wish her a Happy Mother’s Day. She received the plant I had sent to her earlier this week. I’m about to go box up the new coffee maker that arrived Friday to send back. It is leaking and I am very sad about it. Then I might work on a wire stand for my baby Yoda so that I can pose him for pictures. Above all, I am being really quiet in order to let Michael sleep in because as soon as he wakes up, we’ll be out and back in the trenches.