To Sod or Not to Sod--Was Never the Question!

Our yard has been an exciting prospect for Jonathan! In fact, once when I asked him what his favorite thing about the house was.....he said, "The yard!" For those of you that know his mom and dad, you realize what gifts of gardening God gave to the Davis family!! They have a beautiful yard--and Jonny has big plans/dreams for ours! It starts with grass! Now, there is a funny story here....so let me tell it to you! After we cleaned up all the brick debris, left-over lumber, trash, and rock out of the yard, Jonny measured off what we could afford to seed this year. (Which is about 10,000 square feet.) He sprayed Round-Up on the weeds and unwanted grass so we could start with a clean slate. The ground was so hard from lack of rain and from big truck packing it down, we decided we should have someone come and disk it up for us. We called several dirt-work guys and we finally found one that would come and work on it for $200. However, after this arangement was made, we were told we would still need to break it up with a tiller before we actually planted grass seed. So, Jonny decided he would rather spend the $200 on a tiller---even though that meant lots of hard work!! So we went to Sears and bought a tiller. The next day Jonny put the tiller together and got started tilling the side yard. The side yard is by far the worst part of the yard---VERY ROCKY!! After several hours of working, he was not quite half-way finished with it.....and a bolt on the tiller broke. This made the job much more difficult, but Jonny pressed on! About 6 p.m. Jonny saw a man he didn't know walking up the driveway---it was Skeet Hurdle---one of the dirt-work guys that we had called. He said he had driven by and seen Jonny working on this yard all afternoon, felt awful that he had not come earlier in the week to give us an estimate, and told Jonny he would be glad to come and disk it up in the morning for him for $100. Jonny exclaimed, "DEAL!!!!!"

The next morning Skeet arrived very early and worked on our yard for over 1 1/2 hours! It was such a blessing. We had a truckload of dirt ordered for the side yard----It was still just too rocky! Jonny worked on spreading the dump-truck load of dirt out over the side yard (by hand) for a few days, and then tilled up the front and back yards. Now we were ready to plant grass seed! Then it rained and rained before we could plant it.......And it became clear we had another issue!! Our dirt we bought was going to wash away unless we could stop it! So.........we bought some sod. Al and Jonathan layed sod on the slope by the driveway, and then later Jonny and I went back for more sod--to place it around the new dirt! Jonny was so careful in how he placed it--wanting to be sure that he made it go as far as possible. (Thus the funny fan-shaped design!!) However, it WORKED!!! The sod is Zoysia grass---and it is growing beautifully! We wish we had enough money to sod the whole thing! But good things come to those who wait. So we will wait........Hopefully it will dry out soon enough for us to plant the Zoysia grass seed soon!

I'm so proud of my sweet, hard-working, diligent husband!!!!!