One woman and a snow shovel

I took a couple days off work this past week because I had the compost for my new garden beds delivered. It started raining while the guy was dumping it, so I covered it with a tarp while I figured out how to get it into the backyard.

Too bad the guy with the tractor wasn't there to help me. He's with the local gas company. They're replacing all of the gas lines in the neighborhood. While I was laying out the tarp, he did ask if I needed help, but I didn't ask if I could use his tractor.

So here's one of the problems with my lot: the last owners built a large RV pad next to the garage. The compost in the above picture is sitting on the RV pad. To build the pad, they built up the surface of the lot, so it'd be level with the rest of the driveway. This means that there is a big drop off at the front of the pad, heading into the backyard.

view of the stairs - construction debris complements of the basement project

See what I mean? You have to go down three, uneven, unstable stairs to get to the backyard. Not only that, there is a fence at the bottom of the stairs.

view from the stairs

And not far from the fence is a tree. So, even if I laid a board down the stairs as a ramp, if I tried to get a wheelbarrow down, it'd probably bounce at the bottom, run into the tree, and tip over before I could get it under control.

view off the wall

Plan A was to lay a tarp at the bottom of the wall, drop the compost over the edge,

and pull the tarp down the hill to the beds.

the destination way down there

That was great in theory, but it was really hard to get the tarp around the steps and various boards, etc. at the bottom of the steps. Plan B was to lay the tarp next to the tree. That meant going up and down the stairs with every shovel full, but it was definitely easier to move the tarp once it was full. I just pulled it down the hill, lifted it over the edge of the bed, and dumped it in.

I got one fer each o' ya

It was slow work.

that's two

After several hours of this, the pile in the driveway hadn't gotten much smaller.

But the beds were getting pretty full, and I hadn't even added the peat and vermiculite yet. I took a few minutes to ponder this, and it suddenly occurred to me that I had done the math wrong and had ordered twice as much compost as I needed.

At that point, after spouting a few expletives, I went to the garden center for the peat and vermiculite, mixed it into the beds, and called it a day. After about seven hours of working in the cold, and then realizing I'd made a giant mistake, I was ready for this:

a hot bath and a beer

A giant, jetted tub wasn't on our wish list when we were house hunting, but some days I'm very glad we ended up with one.

I'll continue the story of the compost in my next post.