Deceitful Dirt

Who would have thought that an eighteen inch wide piece of dirt could be so ornery and downright deceitful, even if it was 45 feet long!

It began several years ago when the neighbor poured cement next to the fence and it oozed under. Tired of looking at the eye-sore, dad decided to simply put a length of "pressure treated" along it and plant something.

The good news was that the edging went in alright, the bad news was - that's where the sprinklers had been placed. We dutifully dug them up and re-routed them to the front of the boards.

The good news was that we didn't break any, the bad news was - it about broke us. The fill dirt that dad had gotten for free when they moved in was now basically concrete and filled with two-man rocks. (No wonder the water never drains)

We now knew we needed to till the ground up a bit before we could plant. The good news was… who am I kidding, from here on out there was no "good" news!

The 18" patch was too small for the Kabota, but way too big for us. It took two of us, spelling each other ALL DAY, to pick and shovel the clay concrete and rocks out of the 55 foot planting strip.

It is easier to stay out than to get out.”
Mark Twain

We saw the 1" white PVC pipe a couple of times and wondered (at least I did) if, now that we had it uncovered, we should put in an extra drip line on the automatic system.

Then, none of the front lawn sprinklers would work and we didn't know if it had been my attempts at roto-tilling or dad's driving the re-bar supports for the lumber which had damaged the cable.  SO… we dug it up again, the full 65 foot length, only this time down six more inches into solid bedrock.

Not finding the break, I patched along the whole 70 foot length with some new sprinkler cable and it worked — but now realized we needed to lay the new wire in some kind of pipe or it would get cut again. You guessed it, more digging.

Finally buried, and with a 18" x 20" deep x 80 foot long hole, I decided that all that work should not go un-punished and just had to put in an extra hose bib in that corner of the lawn AND another valve and connection for a drip system.

Dad, a former farmer, says that "workable rocks" never hurt anything - Me, I just say that I've never even seen a rock that I liked ('ceptin those purdy ones on the top that I can look at.)

We are just now waiting until we are sure the splices actually don't leak to bury the thing so no one breaks a leg when they fall down the 100 foot long crevasse.

All of this and it's no wonder that we decided that we didn't want to share the peaches with the birds.