For six months, we have been planning a landscaping weekend for my Dad to come down with various tools and machinery and tend to various and unsightly problems with our front yard. (The back yard is a separate trip.) This included buying sod, which is apparently the more costly and more attractive alternative to grass seed, so this had a budget of more-than-one-but-less-than-five-hundred dollars. We were not deterred by this project with the federal shutdown looming, until we got word as my parents were packing the truck to leave Jena, that Corey's mid-month pay would be half of the usual if the government shut down on Friday at midnight. This would mean that we would have to exhaust our landscaping budget to subsidize the missing pay and buy necessities like fuel to get the children to school and food to feed them when they told us they wanted to eat.
For reasons far more pressing than our plans for beautifying our front yard, we were relieved when Congress struck a deal at the 11th hour to keep government open. Trying not to get all uptight and worried about something is every bit as exhausting as just going ahead and getting all uptight and worried about it, so Corey and I had to hug it out when CNN broke the news late last night that there would be no shutdown and he would get a full paycheck. We went to bed and this morning my dad showed up with a chainsaw, a tiller, some shovels, an ax and a saw.
The only pine trees in our subdivision are in our front yard. We hate them. The roots of these suckers have eaten our neighbor's driveway, which he had to dig up and repave. They are starting to pop up our driveway, so taking the chainsaw to the roots was priority on the list. Dad took at them with a chainsaw and the shovels while Corey whipped some ass with an ax older than he is. So old, in fact, that after every fourth swing he would have to tap the top of it on the root for fear the blade was just going to fly right off. Landen got dressed and came out to help, but we made him stay on the house side of the sidewalk, to protect him from debris and flying ax blades. He was allowed to inspect the progress when no gas or man-powered machinery was in operation.
As it turned out, the tentacles of our pine trees are strong and mighty and some of them cannot be removed. Death will visit them, because they were severed from the tree. But complete removal as Corey and Dad has envisioned was not possible without a winch. Lots of winches in Jena. No winches to be borrowed in Baton Rouge. We poured dirt over it and laid down some sod and we'll water the hell out of it and see what a couple good south Louisiana rains to do how unsightly this is.
When we bought this house, half the front yard (the part with the 20+ year-old crepe myrtle) was covered with burgundy chips and weird bushes. We have removed the weird bushes and most of the ground cover incrementally because I wanted grass there. This morning there was a very old tiller fired up so the dirt could be loosened, fertilized and prepped for sod. The pine trees across the tiny yard have millions of little roots coming all the way up to the house, it appears, so there was lots of whacking and pulling of roots that I did not capture in pictures. I also requested that they remove the brick border because grass needed to come up to the edges of the sidewalk and driveway.
Jake came out periodically in his pajamas and his bedhair to check on everybody, but did not take enough interest in participating to put clothes on. That's not true. Corey made them stack bricks and he did it in those pajamas.
After this there was a handoff. Corey had to go to work for a little while and Dad and I took off to Home Depot to get sod for $1.59 per 1x2 foot piece. We ended up using 72 pieces in the yard. Great Clare stayed behing to tend to the boys. Justin was waiting to take over for Corey when Dad and I got back from Home Depot. He used an ax to cut sod in puzzle pieces to line up the odd-shaped area of yard.
And someone picked up some beer along the way.
And then (six hours after we first fired up the chainsaw) there was LAWN! And the irises Dad put in the brand-new edged circle around the crepe myrtle. Murphy has more grass in the front yard to make deposits on! We did leave about two-feet off the front porch to add shrubbery later. I'm thinking gardenias so I can sit on my porch swing and smell my flowers while I drink white wine and watch Murphy take dumps on the lovely St. Augustine we just lovingly placed in the yard. Now it looks like this, which is glorious, and after six weeks of watering it every day and not cutting it we'll have a full natural lawn!
The plan was for Dad to grill steaks but everybody needed to shower first. ALL the boys were filthy, even Murphy, so every Allbritton boy got a shower or bath. I even needed to get clean even though I did nothing but share my vision, supervise, make a hefty charge to my Home Depot Card and take pictures. I mean it, y'all. I did not lift a frigging finger. By the time I got in the bath there was very little hot water, but even Jake and Landen did more manual labor than I did today, so I took my lukewarm bath. I did bathe the dog, who'd been laying in tilled dirt every chance he got all day. Even he was entitled to hot water.
We got to put everybody at our dining table, extending it for the first time, while we chowed on New York strips, Dad's famous potatoes, salad with homemade ranch dressing, garlic bread, Snickers cake (I bought it) and vanilla ice cream. I took no pictures of any of this. But I did take some pictures of the food afterglow, like Jake chillaxing with Great Don, Landen getting all excited about watching Men in Black II later and Dixie being rubbed by five people at the same time.
Corey and Landen had a slap-off, which I'm not posting video of, but Landen won. Wrestling makes me nervous. Everybody's having a great time until someone's ear gets boxed and then I get pissed as the mom and forced spectator.
It was a beautiful, beautiful day. All my people I love most in the world were under the same roof, my roof, the roof my husband and I own and care for. Then everybody went back to their respective hotels/apartments/couch beds (it's Slumber Party Saturday!) and Murphy and I piled into my bed to watch Grease 2, sing the lyrics to Cydney via text message and play with our pictures and blog.
I mean it. I did NONE of the work today. But I love the shit out of everybody who did.
This is the longest blog post ever.
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