Covered up mess, tree removal, koi pond, feeling better (?)

When I got home yesterday afternoon Terry Cobb was finished covering up the trenches and holes he had dug for the septic system. It was not overly pretty but we can take it from there and do the finishing touches. He also had taken out the brick wall at the entrance to our driveway. That was a real blessing to have that gone. Mama said it took him about fifteen minutes. He dug a hole in the middle lot to put the bricks into. I thought that was a pretty good idea. We have a lot of other bricks and such we can add to the hole before we cover it up also.

He was waiting on me to help him take out a couple trees in the front of the house. One was a dead tree in the front yard. The other was the tree in the center of the driveway. I rode up in the bucket of the backhoe and looped a chain around the top notch of the tree and he backed out as far as the chain would allow and began to pull. In order the minimize the damage to our driveway I cut the base about half way through and the tree leaned cooperatively into the pull of the chain and fell into the circle of lawn in front of the house. I will have to grind out the stump later.

The other tree was a dead tree so we thought it would not be a problem. We were all wrong. He tried to push it over but it would not budge. He dug a bit and pushed a bit until he had dug about three feet deep all the way around the tree before he was able to push it over. It proved to be the most difficult of all the ones he removed for us. I used the last of my energy to cut it into pieces before I quit.

Earlier in the afternoon Terry spent about ten minutes digging out the open circle in the patio so I could put in a koi pond. It needs to be finished out but it is about four feet deep at this point. I am not sure how he did it because the bucket on the backhoe is almost the size of the opening he was working in. I could have it finished in a couple weeks. With all the extra work he did and parts he bought to make repairs he still only charged us a little over $5000. I was very pleased.

The back yard is still a gouged up mess both from his machine and our tractor. He believes the sprinkler system has been leaking for years causing the ground to be saturated. I noticed when we had the tractor in the yard the sod would wave and buckle underneath it as it moved through the grass like we were driving on a layer of cloth placed on top of sand. I will have to investigate it more but I believe we eliminated the lines to the sprinklers. We took out almost everything else.

We did not go to FBI last night. I am still feeling pretty badly and Mama and Victoria were not enthused about going – each of them is feeling poorly also. They were supposed to go shopping yesterday but neither of them felt up to it. I am pretty sure that will change today. Mama told me yesterday that she had not been out of the house for three days and I told her it reflected very positively in out bank accounts.

We are all feeling better but not by much.