Help Wanted: Faeries to Appear in the Night

Many parents use the faery tactic with their children to encourage clean bedrooms, brushed teeth, finished meals: the faeries are not going to come in the night and do it for you! Today, I'm wishing there were gaggles of little guys getting shovels ready to finish clearing the sod from my front yard during the night.

Today, I shoveled up one truck full of sod and made the dump run. The supervisor came over twice to check on progress, telling me it doesn't usually take "that long" to empty a pick-up bed. I smiled sweetly and told him I wasn't aware there was a time limit, that it takes as long as it takes when I'm the one behind the rake. I offered him to do the job himself to speed it up if that would help his traffic flow.

No, he didn't want to help me--just encourage me to be faster. It took me 1-1/2 hours to fill it and only 1/2 hour to empty it, so I thought it went pretty well.

Two more truck loads will do the trick. The problem is that because Juan wouldn't read the directions so he could stop, turn, and do the next row with the machinery, he did a half-assed job at best, leaving a whole lot of sod for me to dig out by hand. It's better than nothing, I guess, but it cost me $100 for the rental, and I wanted all the sod cut, not just parts of it.

The sod will be removed by the end of the weekend as the painter comes in Monday and I can't be throwing black dirt into the air and onto the new paint. As soon as the painter finishes, the wall guys are coming, and the new brick retaining wall will be done by the end of next weekend.

And that leaves me with bare dirt behind a nice retaining wall--and the rest of my project to complete. I think it's actually going to be easier to deal with once the wall is in and I have some boundaries to work within. I'm going to call around about getting help with the watering system, but the rest of this is going to be on my shoulders as those darned faeries just don't seem to be inhabiting the desert this summer.