Saturday, June 12, 2004

A bit of fresh air and exercise

The new fence is looking good, with just one section to go plus a 'cap' (the bit that goes on top to give it a finished look). There has been a large pile of dirt outside my front door for the last few days, due to the builder digging holes and putting posts in; I'd decided we could dispose of the dirt by transferring it to the back yard (thereby filling in the big dip that's been there ever since a plumber dug it up to fix the sewer pipe of a house two doors up).

Because we're going away next weekend, I realised we'd have to get moving on this task, or have a big pile of dirt/mud/concrete remnants outside my front door for at least the next four weeks. So I had to interrupt my Saturday morning activity of reading the paper in the sun and looking at the job ads, in order to shift dirt.

We don't have a shovel, and we don't have a wheelbarrow.

I started out with a plastic dust pan and a plastic bucket; after five or six trips though, I could imagine how someone watching would utterly crack up with the silliness and inefficiency of my methods. So I borrowed my sister-in-law's shovel and got another bucket. By this time, the boy was up and only slightly hung over; he took on the role of transporting the buckets. It still took about two hours in all, and by the end of it my boots were so caked in mud I was probably wearing a significant portion of the dirt pile.

But it's not over. Tomorrow we're going to put the concrete bits around the dirt bed we've created, so that it looks as though we have a bordered vege garden-in-waiting rather than a shallow grave.

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