Digging in the Dirt

I told my co-workers that I was going to take a day off during spring break and dig in the dirt, and I'm sure they imagined that meant I would be doing some gardening. Ha! In our ongoing (and never-ending) quest to make the back yard just a bit more presentable, I wanted to add a brick landing outside the garage door to coordinate with the one at the bottom of the New Deck steps.

And because I have the impression that you love to know every detail of my life, here is how I did it.

Step 1: Document "before."

Isn't that sad? And isn't that picture dark? It was cold, too. Good thing I'm going to be doing some physical exercise! She said, cheerily!

Step 2: Gather proper equipment:



Gloves. Two telephones (landline and cell). Camera for documentation purposes. Oh, and bricks.


Step 3: Begin to dig.

Dig, dig, dig. I'm a diggin' machine, a regular John Henry in denim capri pants. Whoops, not deep enough, dig some more.

Hey! This is like an archaeological find. I don't know what the previous owners of our house did out here next to the garage, but here's a shard of a plate, found alongside multiple shards of window glass and some rusted bottle tops, and the find of the day:

A toothbrush! Top that, people who discovered the first human settlement in North or Central America.

By now I've been digging for two hours, and carting the dirt around the yard to fill in holes where Our Dog Pepper (see top photo) has spent the winter excavating for gold. I'm beginning to be afraid that if I take out one more shovelful I'll see an Asian face looking up at me from the other side of the earth.

But not to worry, because it's time for the next step--

The spooky-looking frame (does it really look like a coffin or do I just have a really morbid imagination?) sits in the hole to keep the bricks from migrating to opposite sides of the yard. I, the Little Red Hen of construction projects, measured for it, and went to the lumberyard to buy the treated 12-foot board, and unloaded it from the pick-up, and measured it again.Also, I unloaded all those sacks of sand from the pick-up. After I bought them, all by myself, at the lumberyard. Then Husband cut the boards and screwed them together. (What? Even the Little Red Hen wasn't stupid enough to use a power saw.)

Step I've Lost Track of the Number: Almost done.

Fill frame with sand, arrange bricks in a beautiful pattern, then...

 Stand back and admire the "after" shot! Woo! I am woman, watch me do construction!

Oh, and one final step: 

I am old.