Free dirt! And Free Delivery!

So this morning, I was up early awaiting the delivery of free dirt to my driveway. I asked for four yards of dirt, hoping to fill up all the crazy holes in the backyard.

These pictures do not do it justice. This pile of dirt is much much more than it seems in the pictures. If you compare it to the size of the lawn behind it, then maybe you just might get an idea of how big this pile really is.

9AM, I start shoveling dirt

9:45pm, two hispanic men in a truck drives by as I was observing the monstrosity in front of me. The man in the passenger seat gets out of the car and walks up my driveway. He offers me their labor. I decline. He looks at me, then at the pile of dirt and said, "that's a lot of dirt just for you."

12pm, three hours later of muscle-aching labor, I shoveled and wheelbarrowed a quarter of the dirt into the backyard all by my lonesome

1pm, an extra pair of hands from the neighborhood offers to help, free of charge

3pm, we gave up for the day, with a third of the dirt left and half of the holes filled

Stage 1 - Just Muddling

When I first bought this property a couple years ago, this entire backyard was a green lawn.  My beloved dogs have managed to kill all the grass by digging holes everywhere.  Can't really blame them - there were gophers and my bloodhound has a nose that just wont quit.  This is how the backyard currently looks. In the past couple of weeks, we cleared out some of the dead grass and weed. It actually looked a lot worse before, especially during the rainy season when three feet weeds covered the entire backyard. The scorching heat from this summer has helped killed most of it.

These are some of the holes that the dogs dug up in the past two years.

Section 1 - This is the section to the right of the patio that we'll be concentrating on first. I will post more pictures to show the progress of this area.